Issues on current radar systems

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of radar systems and their main applications that have pushed radar toward new paradigms and system concepts. In particular, the chapter discusses the basic theory and concepts behind a classical radar system. The basic radar nomenclature and architecture are summarized in brief, and a summary of the main radar functionalities and applications is given. This is followed by the new challenges that modern radar systems are facing, with special emphasis on a high degree of adaptability to the environment and the capacity to cooperate in a network. Such new features are meant to enhance the radar performance in terms of detection, tracking, and automatic target recognition in a dynamic environment and to enable a radar system to be able to handle several tasks by managing its resources autonomously and intelligently.