Patent ID: 7728764

Claim:
A method for providing effective adaptive sidelobe blanking for use in a platform mounted phase array radar system for detecting targets when interference occurs, the radar system including a main antenna channel and at least one auxiliary antenna channel for transmitting and receiving a main beam and sidelobe patterns from a main antenna and receiving an auxiliary antenna pattern from at least one auxiliary antenna, the main and auxiliary channel being coupled to a sidelobe blanking (SLB) circuit for blanking out interference and whose output couples to a radar data processor included in the system for processing the antenna patterns and producing data patterns and weighting factor sets and beam pointing direction signals and a beam steering generator coupled to the radar data processor for receiving the beam pointing direction signals, the method comprising: (a) including in the system, a characterizer component coupled to the radar data processor and to beam steering generator for providing sets of best weighting factors information as a function of main beam sidelobe distribution as inputs to the beam steering generator for generating antenna pattern sets for use by the system; (b) the characterizer component generating a SLB characteristic map for each set of antenna patterns received from the radar processor; (c) the characterizer component generating a SLB effectiveness chart from the SLB characteristic map; (d) the characterizer component selecting a best antenna weighting set based on which auxiliary antenna pattern exhibits the best performance; and, (e) the characterizer component applying the best weighting factors selected in step (d) as an updated input to the beam steering generator for generating the best antenna pattern set to provide an adaptive SLB capability in conjunction with the operation of the SLB circuit.