Cognitive Radar 1: Cognitive Diversity Radar Sensing

Instructor: Prof. Chris J. Baker
The Ohio State University

Course Description:
Advanced radar systems have capability that is beyond our ability to exploit. For example SAR systems produce imagery at prodigious rates as they survey the surface of the earth. Not all this information is relevant to individual studies but the full potential of the powerful sensing modality is not being obtained. How can the capability of a SAR system be improved so that attention is only applied to imagery central to a particular investigation?

This tutorial introduces the concept of human and mammalian cognition and its application to radar sensing. It commences by demonstrating the need for improvements in radar signal processing to enable more efficient data interpretation, autonomous navigation and full exploitation of electronic scanning. The basics of diversity radar sensing, signal processing (particularly information exploitation) and the operation human brain and mind are bought together in the context of advanced radar sensing. From this a foundation is laid such that it is possible to conceive of novel sensing methods abstracted from truly cognitive systems (such as the echo locating bat and the human) for application within advanced radar systems.  It will be shown that the exploitation of diversity is key to successful mission accomplishment and the foundations for this will be explained. The tutorial will conclude with a short design exercise to generate a cognitive processing architecture.

This tutorial is suitable for graduate levels students and beyond who have a grasp of the fundamentals of radar systems and wish to gain grounding in the next generation of signal processing and information exploitation concepts.

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Prof. Chris Baker is the Ohio State Research Scholar in Integrated Sensor Systems at The Ohio State University. Until June 2011 he was the Dean and Director of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the Australian National University (ANU). Prior to this he held the Thales-Royal Academy of Engineering Chair of intelligent radar systems based at University College London. He has been actively engaged in radar system research since 1984 and is the author of over two hundred publications. His research interests include, Coherent radar techniques, radar signal processing, radar signal interpretation, Electronically scanned radar systems, natural echo locating systems and radar imaging. He is the recipient of the IEE Mountbatten premium (twice), the IEE Institute premium and is a Fellow of the IET. He is a visiting Professor at the University of Cape Town, Cranfield University, University College London, Adelaide University and Wright State University.