Radar velocity determination using direction of arrival measurements
| DWPI Title: Aircraft radar system for determining aircraft velocity, has comparator component for identifying relationship between first and second pixels and determining actual velocity of aircraft based upon identified relationship between pixels |
| Abstract: The various technologies presented herein relate to utilizing direction of arrival (DOA) data to determine various flight parameters for an aircraft A plurality of radar images (e.g., SAR images) can be analyzed to identify a plurality of pixels in the radar images relating to one or more ground targets. In an embodiment, the plurality of pixels can be selected based upon the pixels exceeding a SNR threshold. The DOA data in conjunction with a measurable Doppler frequency for each pixel can be obtained. Multi-aperture technology enables derivation of an independent measure of DOA to each pixel based on interferometric analysis. This independent measure of DOA enables decoupling of the aircraft velocity from the DOA in a range-Doppler map, thereby enabling determination of a radar velocity. The determined aircraft velocity can be utilized to update an onboard INS, and to keep it aligned, without the need for additional velocity-measuring instrumentation. |
| Use: Aircraft radar system for determining aircraft velocity. |
| Advantage: The system measures of the squint angle to a target pixel to enable calculation of the radar's velocity, thus facilitating improved radar image formation. The system obtains the information to align, and maintain alignment of a navigator without a need for additional velocity-measuring instrumentation. |
| Novelty: The system (130) has a comparator component (170) for obtaining first Doppler frequency information and first squint angle for first pixel and second Doppler frequency information and second squint angle for second pixel. The comparator component identifies a relationship between the first and second pixels, where the relationship is a function of the first and second Doppler frequency informations and the first and second squint angles. The comparator component determines actual velocity of an aircraft (110) based upon the identified relationship between the first and second pixels. |
| Filed: 3/11/2015 |
| Application Number: US14645131A |
| Tech ID: SD 12907.0 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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