RADAR & Signal Processing Applications

Signal processing for radar systems is an extensive and engaging discipline that covers multiple styles and borders on many application spaces. The history of radar started more than one hundred years ago, in 1904, when Christian Hülsmeyer demonstrated the first observed radar in Cologne, Germany (Griffiths et al., 2019). The banks of the River Rhine at Cologne’s Hohenzollern Bridge were the location of this momentous innovation. Later, in 1920, Guglielmo Marconi also kept in his experiments radio detection of targets, but it was not until World War II that the emotional result of radar appeared. It has since then developed into an indispensable all-weather, long-range sensor.

Military and security applications have always been the primary motorists of radar development. However, radar has become a critical technology for civilian applications, including air, maritime, and ground traffic management, in addition to metropolitan sensing and indoor monitoring. Radar not only impacts our current world but also shapes our future.

According to its acronym, RAdio Detection And Ranging, the classical radar mission is to see and locate things (Skolnik, 2002). With the advent of coherent pulse radar, speed measurements using the Doppler effect have become possible (Chen and Ling, 2001).In contrast to camera images and many other detectors, radar can deliver quantitative data on range and rate. Today's technological radars measure range as well as azimuth and peak angles, promoting target detection and localization. Through Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Interferometric SAR (InSAR), and Inverse SAR (ISAR), a 3D image of an object can be obtained (Melvin and Scheer, 2012; Richards, 2014). In recent years, sedentary radar systems have been acquiring significant and increasing awareness for both target detection and ground imaging (Lombardo and Colone, 2012; Blasone et al., 2020).

Applications of radar methods span from ocean current observing to Earth digital elevation mapping, from automotive to biomedicine, from industrial monitoring in IoT scenarios to through-the-wall imaging (Amin, 2010), from the detection of significant signs and discerning the activities of regular life (Amin, 2017) to UAV monitoring (see Theodoridis and Chellappa (2013) and Theodoridis and Chellappa (2017) for a wide overview of several radar signal processing methods and applications). There are also many key radar applications in agriculture, geology, soil moisture monitoring, forestry, geomorphology, hydrology, land use, oceanography, land cover mapping, and archeology.

Radar has a long history, and feeling from the growing applications of active sensing, it has an outstanding and bright future. Future radar methods should effectively support a massive multiplicity of applications with novel hardware solutions and creative signal processing methods. Several great challenges inherent to future radar systems are outlined in the following.

RADAR & Signal Processing Applications

Digital signal processing in radar systems enables DO178 Complaint Application Development. Mistral’s DO178 Complaint Application Development services include the development of RADAR & Signal Processing Apps that cater to applications for mission-critical and safety-critical designs consisting of user interface and communication, command, and management functionality.

OVERVIEW

Digital Signal Processing in Radar Systems addresses robust signal processing issues in complex applications for mission-critical and safety-critical scenarios. Modern radars accomplish almost all the needed signal processing digitally. Mistral suggests a range of application development services for digital signal processing in the radar system. Applications for mission-critical and safety-critical scenarios are those where loss could result in loss of life, substantial property damage, or harm to the environment. Instances include medical devices, weapons systems, aircraft flight control, etc.

Applications for mission-critical and safety-critical systems

Mistral’s engineering team is well versed in the principles, rules, and processes common to DO178 Complaint Application Development. Mistral’s range of services for digital signal processing in radar systems caters to mission-critical and safety-critical systems applications. Many modern communication systems are evolving to be safety-critical in a broad definition. Mission-critical and safety-critical software designs are often distributed methods because they are usually large and may need sameness and break of safety-critical regulations from non-safety-critical code.

All these elements make up the system configuration towards numerous cooperating processors/FPGAs/sub-systems. Digital signal processing in radar systems can be executed on FPGA and/or signal processing platforms to assist strategy and create and execute safe, secure, reliable, and compliant applications for mission-critical and safety-critical systems.

With expertise in developing certified defence and aerospace solutions, Mistral has a broad understanding base of the tools, techniques, standards, and regulations to provide DO-254, DO-160, and DO-178 respectful application development for different avionics sub-systems. Our benefits for digital signal processing in radar systems are complimented by our radar and signal processing applications, which include: DSP Algorithm performance, DO178 Complaint Application Development, and Linux/VxWorks-based client application development assistance.

Conclusion

New radar technologies and applications are found and offered almost every day. However, challenges and gaps still need to be addressed. In this editorial article, we have summarised some important aspects of radar signal processing, but the list is not exhaustive. For instance, distributed signal processing techniques to use all the data available within a related and spatially diverse multi-platform system are a subject of increasing interest. The IEEE AES Magazine is organising a special issue dedicated to "Multi-Platform and Multi-Functional RF Systems (MPRFS) and (MFRFS)" that will be published at the end of 2021. Another application site, not noted above, concerns the application of the latest radar technologies and strategies for advancing atmospheric and weather science. This is a formal research area where the use of machine learning methods, possibly combined with traditional statistical signal processing techniques, promises new frontiers.

Additionally, areas of growing research interest include software-defined radar (SDR), low-cost radar, terahertz, mmWave radar, and quantum radar. Finally, advances in radar sensing technologies will pave the way for adequate Internet of Things (IoT) and industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions, impacting many factors of our daily lives. The advancement toward low-cost sensors, hardware architectures, and signal processing algorithms will further push the benefits of radar technology into new civilian application sites. If you are looking for the best software development company, you can reach out to us at PerfectionGeeks Technologies.