Radar with wide angular coverage, notably for the obstacle avoidance function on board auto-piloted aircraft

A radar system comprising:

• at least one processing means,
• one transmitting antenna, and
• one receiving antenna formed by an array of radiant elements, a configuration of the array being characterized by a set of parameters determining a geometrical form of the array, a number of radiant elements and a pitch between the radiant elements, a radiation pattern of said transmitting antenna being determined to maximize an antenna gain, the configuration of the array being defined according to the following steps:
• in a preliminary step, a basic configuration of said array is chosen;
• in a first step, a signal expected from a target in P directions is determined;
• in a second step, a summation, for each of said P directions, of signals received by each radiant element is determined so as to maximize a signal-to-noise ratio at an output of said summation;
• in a third step, a figure of merit is calculated as a function of signal-to-noise ratios received on said P directions;
• in a fourth step, the set of parameters of the array are varied and then there is a loop back to the first or the second step depending on the parameters of the array that have been modified, the configuration being chosen from the configurations which maximizes a figure of merit.