Radar for battlefield surveillance – Annual report 2013

Authors:

  • Stefan Nilsson
  • Åsa Andersson
  • Magnus Gustavsson
  • Magnus Herberthson
  • Tommy Johansson
  • Mikael Karlsson
  • Jonas Rahm
  • Ain Sume
  • Anders Örbom

Publish date: 2013-12-31

Report number: FOI-R--3765--SE

Pages: 26

Written in: Swedish

Keywords:

  • “see-through-the-wall”
  • wall penetrating radar
  • Doppler radar
  • see behind corners
  • polarimetry
  • polarization
  • urban scenario
  • battlefield surveillance
  • SAR
  • ISAR
  • MIMO

Abstract

This annual report gives an account of the activities carried out and the results produced in the second year of the three-year Swedish Armed Forces' project Battlefield Surveillance Radar. The project involves a further development of the competence and technique platform established by FOI through previous efforts established in the research areas of Wall Penetrating Radar and Radar for Seeing behind Corners. The project is focused on the phenomenological and technical study, evaluation and development of methods, signal processing and system solutions for both Doppler-based and imaging wall-penetrating radar systems. The project participates in the NATO group Advancing Sensing through the Walls Technologies (2009-2014), including Sweden, US, Canada, France, Italy, Norway and Turkey. The group studies methods and techniques that increase the ability to detect, track and image primarily humans behind walls. This year, a common field test was carried out at DRDC in Ottawa with various wall-penetrating systems, the results of which will be analyzed and evaluated next year. In order to improve detection performance of a human target we investigate the possibility of using polarimetric wave forms. A human-to-background contrast increase has been acheived with the help of polarimetric optimization. The FOI-introduced method to detect human movement behind corners by radar has been developed further. We have this year shown that it is possible to use only multiple reflections to achieve positioning of a moving target, by using narrow scanning lobes. An extensive see-behind-corners trial in urban environment has been carried out at the MSS SIB-premises on the Swedish Armed Forces training ground Kvarn. These measurements included walking persons, bicycling persons, and cars, moving either individually or together in various combinations along controlled paths. The purpose of the measurements is to investigate the potential of the method in an operative application perspective. Among other things, we want to investigate if it is possible to distinguish between different simultaneous targets. The main part of the analysis work will be carried out next year, but early analysis indicates very positive results, e.g. that target objects can be detected after two wall reflections, and that several objects can be detected.