Invited talk at RADAR'09

I was invited to speak at the 2009 International Radar Conference in Bordeaux, France, where the theme of the conference was "Surveillance for a safer world" and over 400 engineers were in attendance. The plenary session in which I talked put emphasis on the state of the art, progress over the past decade, and the future evolutions.

My talk was on Multifunction Phased Array Radar for Weather and Aircraft Surveillance and I had the pleasure of sharing this presentation with Dr. Jeffrey Herd from MIT Lincoln Lab. For more information, below is the abstract of our talk.

Abstract

The U.S. Government operates seven distinct radar networks providing weather and aircraft surveillance for public weather services, air traffic control and homeland defense. A next-generation, multifunction phased array radar (MPAR) concept has been proposed that could provide enhanced weather and aircraft surveillance services with potentially lower life-cycle costs than multiple single-function radar networks. If critical technology costs decrease sufficiently, MPAR radars might prove to be a cost effective alternative to current surveillance radars, since the number of required radars would be reduced, and maintenance and logistics infrastructure would be consolidated. MIT Lincoln Laboratory (under support by the Federal Aviation Administration) and the National Severe Storms Laboratory (NSSL) are conducting technology assessment programs to: 1) define and retire technical risk, 2) establish measured performance capability, and 3) provide realistic system cost models. The MIT program is addressing key technology challenges including low cost dual polarized active phased array panels, overlapped digital subarray architecture, and accurate performance and cost models for the radars. The NSSL program is utilizing the National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT), an S-band phased array radar located in Norman Oklahoma, to develop and demonstrate new phased array processing techniques such as adaptive beam scanning for greatly improved temporal resolution and methods to improve the quality of meteorological products. In addition, the Phased Array Radar Innovative Sensing Experiment (PARISE) conducted yearly at NSSL involves customers of weather radar data to explore how to best capitalize on PAR capabilities to address 21st century forecast and warning needs. This paper will present the current status of these efforts, and describe future enhancements.

Click here for the official NSSL press release (20 Oct 2009).

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