A compact, low-cost, wide-angle radar test bed

Recent technology developments in digital radio, low-cost inertial navigation systems and unmanned air vehicle design are converging to enable and make practical several new radar sensing modes such as simultaneous SAR/GMTI from persistent staring-mode radar, 3D SAR from a single-pass, single phase center radar and wide-angle radar tracking of dismounts. One of the challenges for algorithm developers is a lack of high-quality target and clutter signature data from the new radar modes. AFRL's Sensor Directorate and SET Corporation are developing a compact, low-cost wide-angle radar test bed capable of simulating a variety of radar modes, including 3D SAR, SAR/GMTI from staring-mode radar and ultra-fine resolution range-Doppler. We provide an overview of the wide-angle radar test bed architecture, its modular design and our implementation approach. We then describe several non-conventional wide-angle radar sensor modes and outline a corresponding series of test bed data collection experiments that could be used to support the development of new tracking and recognition algorithms.