A Novel Batch Scheduling Algorithm with Digital Simultaneous Looks for Airborne Surveillance Radars

In airborne surveillance radars, priority tracking of maneuvering targets with high g-factors, popularly known as full track mode, is of paramount importance. In a dense target scenario, priority/full tracking of a large number of maneuvering targets, require an efficient radar task scheduler. We propose an improved radar scheduler based on two methods namely, 1) Simultaneous Multi-directional Detection with Phase Spoiling (SMDPS) and 2) Batch Earliest Deadline First Algorithm (BEDF). The proposed scheduler simultaneously utilizes the advantage of transmit beam shaping in Active Electronically Scanned Array and batch processing nature of BEDF. We show that our algorithm drastically improves over the conventional EDF algorithm in terms of total number of priority/full tracks. A unique feature of our algorithm is that maximum number of priority tracks is independent of target density and is only limited by the available processing power. The results are of particular interest in airborne surveillance where functionalities like threat assessment, intercept control etc., are heavily dependent on the efficiency of radar scheduler.