Physical Optics Corporation — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF182-106

Description

To address the Air Force’s needs for a high-dynamic-range (HDR) synthetic aperture radar (SAR)/ground moving target indicator (GMTI) and passive/bistatic radar for detection of small targets in the presence of noise and clutter interference, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Advanced High-Dynamic-Range Radar (HYDRA) that utilizes POC-developed mature components, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components, and innovative POC algorithms. Specifically, the innovation in combining POC’s unique radar hardware with high-fidelity simulation will enable the architecture to facilitate development of cognitive adaptive radar algorithms for dynamic range improvements. HYDRA’s innovative system design and algorithms significantly improve the dynamic range and hence (a) provide better SAR imagery due to decreased speckle noise, which improves automatic target recognition, and (b) increase the space/time adaptive processing (STAP) performance. STAP is a method for algorithmically correcting for platform motion spatially and temporally to filter out ground stationary clutter. This decreases scintillation effects and directly improves GMTI performance. In Phase I, POC will design HYDRA and develop a limited-scale benchtop prototype to show proof-of-concept feasibility, reaching TRL-3. In Phase II, POC will develop a field-ready HYDRA prototype at TRL-5/-6, which can be demonstrated to a suitable customer for further transition, and develop a commercialization plan.