Research

Astronomy & Space Sciences

Title :

Coherent integration for space objects tracking

Area of research :

Astronomy & Space Sciences

Focus area :

Radar Signal Processing, Space Debris, High Performance Computing

Details

Executive Summary :

Detection of low RCS targets with high speed and complex motions has been receiving a growing attention and significant research efforts in the modern radar field especially in space debris tracking. It is known that the radar target detection performance can be improved significantly via long term coherent integration by compensating phase fluctuation among different sampling pulses. Nevertheless, the range migration (RM, due to velocity), linear Doppler frequency migration (LDFM, due to acceleration) and quadratic Doppler frequency migration (QDFM, due to jerk motion) may easily happen due to the targets complex motion during the long observation time. Study case and Hardware implementation: Real-time implementation of above procedure/algorithm is a good study case for High Performance Embedded computing platforms as it involves searching the velocity fold factor, estimating acceleration, jerk values and performing CLEAN algorithm for integrating multiple targets. Multi Object Tracking Radar can track space debris of size 0.25sqmtr at a range of 1000Km; therefore implementing the above technique in MOTR will increase the slant range performance of the radar and also lead to detection of low RCS targets at smaller ranges.

Co-PI:

Shri V. Kumar, Satish Dhawan Space Centre- SHAR (SDSC-SHAR), Sriharikota

Organizations involved