FREE REFERENCE MATERIAL WITH COURSE REGISTRATION

Three course books: The following three books are provided free with your registration (total list price value $401):

	NEW Finally the long awaited 3rd edition of Dr. Merrill Skolnik’s Radar Handbook. McGraw-Hill, Hardcover, 1200 pages, List $165, 2008. The Industry Standard in Radar Technology. Now Updated with All the Advances and Trends of the Past 17 Years. State-of-the-art coverage of the entire field of radar technology from fundamentals to the newest applications. With contributions by 30 world experts, this resource examines methods for predicting radar range and explores radar subsystems such as receivers, transmitters, antennas, data processing, ECCM, and pulse compression. This radar handbook also explains the target cross section…radar echoes from ground and sea…and all radar systems, including MTI, AMTI, pulse doppler, and others.
	NEW   Sea Clutter: Scattering, the K-Distribution, and Radar Performance,  Keith D. Ward, Robert J.A. Tough, and Simon Watts, Hardcover, 450 pages, $109; 2006. Radar software provided. Gives an authoritative account of our current understanding of radar sea clutter. The authors pay particular attention to the compound K distribution model, which they have developed over the past 20 years. Evidence supporting this model, including a detailed review of the calculation of EM scattering by the sea surface, its statistical formulation, and practical application to the specification, design and evaluation of radar systems are all discussed. The calculation of the performance of practical radar systems is presented in sufficient detail for the reader to be able to tackle related problems with confidence. Excellent coverage of CFAR techniques.
	Tracking and Kalman Filtering Made Easy, Eli Brookner, Wiley-Interscience, 1998, 10th printing, Hardcover, 477 pages, List $127.  Fantastic book, gives an extremely simple explanation of G-H, GHK and the Kalman Filters with physical understanding provided.  Simple geometric and physical coverage of least-squares filtering (LSF) and it’s the voltage methods provide. How they are all related is shown.  Sidelobe canceling related to LSF. Systolic array implementations given for sidelobe chancellors. 4th printing and on has new sections, like a new edition. These include (1) when Kalman Filter is optimal, (2) other forms of Kalman Filter and (3) a section on Non-linear filters.

Also included with the above four books are the following handouts:

1. Reprints of some key papers

2. Hard copies of all the vugraphs

Who Should Take the Course

The course is geared for those who took the basic radar course given previously (over the last 24 years) or have an equivalent knowledge of chirp pulse compression and radar detection, although this is not essential because the required background will be covered in the course albeit briefly.

1. Lecture 1: Feb. 18, 2008

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Inverse SAR (ISAR) and Polar Format

First by way of review a simple explanation of SAR from the two viewpoints will be given — as adoppler processor and as an antenna.  Next the range and doppler migration problem will be discussed followed by a clear explanation of the various techniques for coping with this problem — specifically the revolutionary and ingenious polar format processing will be explained in easy terms. Also covered will be techniques for auto-focus, speckle reduction, super resolution for a factor of 2 improvement in resolution, motion compensation.

2. Lecture 2: Feb. 25

Monopulse Radar Principles and Techniques

Covered are amplitude and phase monopulse; achievement with reflector, lens, phased array,  multiple horn feeds; offset nulling; angle glint; nose-diving; pros and cons of monopulse and sequential lobing; secant correction; effects of multipath on elevation accuracy; combating multipath (off-axis, symmetrical difference-pattern, and complex monopulse); effects of two targets in same range angle cell; hardware.

3. Lecture 3: March 3

Target Cross-Section Estimation and Stealth

Covered in physical tutorial form will be simple back-of-the-envelope techniques for calculating target cross section. This includes Geometric Optics (GO) and Physical Optics (PO). The cross section of the component scatterers (tips, flat plates, edges, curved surfaces, corner reflectors) of complex targets as a function of size, wavelength and aspect angle will be given. Included will be creeping waves, surface traveling waves and edge diffraction. Techniques for target cross section reduction will be discussed — shaping, absorbers, Salisbury screen, Dallenbach layer and Frequency Selective Surfaces (FSS). Also covered will be the method of moments (MOM) and Theory of Diffraction (GTD). Finally, far field, compact range and near-field ranges will be covered.

4. Lecture 4: March 10

Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) Techniques

This tutorial covers CFAR techniques for one-parameter Gaussian clutter, two-parameter nonGaussian clutter (Weibull and Log-Normal clutter) and clutter having arbitrary unknown distribution. Types of CFAR detectors covered are the Mean Level Detector, Log, Dicke-Fix,Siebert, Greatest of, Cell-censoring, Geometric Mean, Composite, Ordered Statistic, Generalized Sign Test, and Mann-Whitney. Simple practical procedures and curves for obtaining CFAR lossare given together with examples.

5. Lecture 5: March 17

Sidelobe Canceling

The simple, single-loop, feed-forward canceller is first introduced in easy terms. This is followed by a discussion of the simple single-loop feedback canceller. Presented will be their performance, transient response and cancellation ratio. The use of hard limiting and automatici gain control (AGC) to improve the transient performance of the feedback SLC is covered. The effects of errors are covered. Finally, the multiple-loop SLC (MSLC) is covered.

6. Lecture 6: March 24

Adaptive Arrays

The optimum weight for a fully adaptive array is developed using a very simple derivation. Methods for implementing this optimum weight are given — the Sample Matrix Inversion (SMI) algorithm, the Applebaum-Howells adaptive feedback loop method, a recursive method, and the use of the Gram-Schmidt, Givens and Householder orthonormal transformations. The use of eigenvector beams and a whitening filter will also be developed. How the latter reduces the transient response is explained. Methods for obtaining the benefits of a fully adaptive array without its high computation and large transient time disadvantages are given. These are the adaptive-adaptive array processing procedures, the use of eigenbeam space, and the method of finding the largest eigenvalues and in turn their eigenbeams. The STAP algorithm will be introduced.

7. Lecture 7: March 31

Sidelobe Canceling, Least Squares Estimation, G-H Filtering, Kalman Filtering, Voltage Techniques.  A Simple, Geometric, Physical Approach — Or All You Want to Know About Least-Squares Estimation But Were Afraid to Ask

The Least-Squares Estimation (LSF) algorithm is developed and applied to the radar tracking problem and the sidelobe canceling problem as well as the adaptive array problem. The math is shown to be identical for all these applications. LSE is developed from a very simple three dimensional geometry point of view. This leads to a very simple development of the Gram-Schmidt voltage processing (square-root) method for solving the LSE problem. Also presented in simple terms are the Givens and Householder voltage-processing methods for solving the LSE problem. The relationship between the Gram-Schmidt, Givens and Householder orthonormal transformations is presented. The massively parallel systolic array sidelobe canceller implementation of the Givens algorithm with the use of the Cordic algorithm is presented. Charlie Rader’s (MIT Lincoln Lab) implementation of this systolic array in a walkman CD size package is presented.

8. Lecture 8: April 7

Power Method for LSE, Discrete-Time Orthonormal Legendre Polynomials (DOLP)

It is shown that finding the best LSE polynomial fit to a target track using the Discrete-time Orthonormal Legendre Polynomials (DOLP) is equivalent to using the Givens, Householder or Gram-Schmidt voltage processing methods. All these methods are related to the classical Gauss elimination procedure for solving simultaneous equations that we learned back in high school.

The power method for doing the LSE algorithm is derived and presented. The voltage algorithm methods have the advantage over the power method for doing the LSE problem of being less sensitive to round off errors. The reason for the computational advantage of these techniques over the “power” methods is presented. The Modified Gram-Schmidt (MGS) and Classical Gram-Schmidt (CGC) will be explained in simple geometric terms which clearly show why the MGC has a computational advantage over the CGS. None of the voltage processing techniques require a matrix inversion, something that the power method requires. Also covered is the use of the Gram-Schmidt orthonormal transformation followed by a whitening filter to reduce SAR speckle, the polarization whitening filter of Dr. Les Novak (MIT Lincoln Lab.

9. Lecture 9: April 14

g-h, g-h-k, Kalman Filters, Singer Kalman Filter

The recursive g-h, g-h-k and Kalman filters will be reviewed with examples given. It will be pointed out how these filters can be derived from LSE.

The Singer g-h-k Kalman filter and its easy to use practical Fitzgerald universal design for tracking aircraft targets will be covered giving examples.

10. Lecture 10: April 21 

Real World Issues Including Tracking with Chirp Waveform

Real-world issues like tracking in clutter, observation merging or clustering, track-drop and track start rules, data association, track before detection (retrospective detection) and editing out inconsistent data are covered. Covered briefly will be the Multiple Hypothesis Tracker (MHT), Probabilistic Data Association Filter (FDAF), Interacting Multiple Model (IMM) Estimator, MHT IMM, and Non-linear Filtering.

Decision (Run/Cancel) Date for  this Course is Monday, February 11, 2008

Course Fee Schedule:

On-line Registration and Payment

On-line registration for this course is closed. If you would like to register for this course, you may do so at Mitre Corporation, 202 Burlington Road Bedford. MA Room 0M503 between 5:30PM -6:00PM on Monday, February 18, 2008 or by contacting the IEEE Office at 781-245-5405.

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Maintained by R M Stelting

Updated Wednesday April 16, 2008