Phased-array radar applications

Schedule-Based Scanning for Phased-Array Radars

To fully unleash the power of the Phased Array Radar (PAR) for adaptive weather sensing, one of the vital components is the ability to schedule multiple tasks that are competing for radar time, such as surveillance and tracking multiple storm cells. For example, one may like to interrogate hazardous or potentially hazardous cells frequently while maintain surveillance task to detect possible new cells. For a single radar to perform multiple tasks, a algorithm is needed to schedule these tasks in a sequence and to meet the requirement of the update rate for each task.

I am leading the design and implementation of a multi-function scheduler that will allow multiple scans to be scheduled and executed on the NWRT PAR “simultaneously.” This will be a key step in demonstrating successful multi-function use of the PAR for weather, aircraft, and other needs. Implemented infrastructure such as collection tags and pre-processor filtering by tag will allow dynamic selection of processing paths depending on the application.

At the same, I'm collaborating with Dr. Tian-You Yu to develop efficient scheduling algorithms in the context of weather radars. Over the past year, we have concentrated on the concept of Time Balance (TB), which is introduced to design and schedule scanning strategies for a number of tasks with the goal of providing rapid update of hazardous regions without compromising data quality. TB is a dynamical process that schedules those competing tasks by balancing the amount of radar time and the time required by each task.

Our preliminary results are exemplified in the figure and better documented on this 2009 Radar Conference paper. This 2010 AMS Annual Meeting paper highlights our most recent accomplishments. This work was published 2010 in the AMS Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology.

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