High level performance model and performance comparison for multistatic radar system design

Abstract

In the history of radar there have been three periods, or "resurgences", of increased development activity in the field of bistatic and multistatic radar. The first resurgence occurred in the 1950's and the second in the late 1960's, and we are currently in the third resurgence [1]. However, the common theme over these resurgences is that there is never an significant uptake of operational radars which exploit bistatic and/or multistatic principles. In general, the design, analysis and optimization of such systems is significanlty more difficult than that of monostatic systems. This is due to the increased number of free design parameters and the lack of standard design methodologies and models. This paper describes the development of a performance prediction software tool which focusses on the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and signal to clutter (SCR) analysis of multistatic systems in the presence of multipath propagation. To allow for the comparison of various system topologies use is made of a novel cumulative distribution technique which summarizes the performance of a single system concept as a single SNR and SCR distribution graph which is evaluated over the coverage volume of the systems. The operation of the tool is demonstrated by comparing the performance of a scanning transmit system against that of a of staring (floodlight) transmit system. The scanning system, which is also the more complex system, is shown to have significantly better performance than that of the staring system.