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AssigneesArizona Board of Regents on Behalf of the University of Arizona, Raytheon Company
InventorsAlphonso A. Samuel, Robert M. Pawloski, Nathan A. Goodman
Estimating the term…
Virtual Aperture Radar (VAR) imaging provides terminal phase radar imaging for an airborne weapon that can resolve multiple closely-spaced or highly correlated scatterers on a given target with a single pulse to provide an aimpoint update at a useful range to target without training data and without requiring a large aperture antenna. VAR imaging exploits the sparse, dominant-scatterer nature of man-made targets. The array manifold is constructed with a large number of basis functions that are parameterized by range or angle (or both) to target. The number of basis functions extends the capability to resolve scatterers beyond the Rayleigh resolution. However, this also makes the manifold underdetermined. A sparse reconstruction technique that places a sparsity constraint on the number of scatterers is used to solve the manifold to uniquely identify the ranges or angles to the scatterers on the target. These updates are passed to the weapon's guidance system, which in turn generates command signals to actuate aerodynamic surfaces such as fins or canards to steer the weapon to the target.
A method of terminal phase radar guidance of an airborne weapon for determining aimpoint measurements to multiple scatterers on a man-made target, comprising:
A method of radar imaging a return RF pulse reflected off a man-made target to provide updated range or angle measurements to the target, comprising:
A terminal phase radar imaging system for an airborne weapon having at least one aerodynamic surface, comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.