Modeling and Analysis for Manned-Unmanned Bistatic Airborne Radar

The Manned-Unmanned Teaming concept involves low cost, attritable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that could be deployed along with a manned aircraft, is a novel concept of operation for future air combat. As an early-warning platform, it has unique advantages, including superior intelligence compared with single UAV swarm, enhanced detection ability and survivability compared to monostatic manned aircraft. Therefore, more efficient and reliable capabilities for moving target detection in complex environments can be achieved. In this paper, a new detection platform, i.e., Manned-Unmanned bistatic airborne radar (MUBAR), in which the manned aircraft is used as transmitter and the V-type formation UAV swarm mounted end-fire antenna array is utilized for receiving, is discussed in detail. Firstly, the space-time signal model for MUBAR is constructed. Secondly, clutter curves in column-row-Doppler domain for three typical working scenarios are analyzed. Then the classic three-dimensional (3D) STAP methods involving fully 3D-STAP and reduced dimensional 3D-STAP are detailed described. Finally, the clutter power spectra for MUBAR are analyzed, and the clutter suppression performance and the minimum detection velocity (MDV) for moving target are evaluated via simulation. The simulation results verified the feasibility that the MUBAR can be utilized for moving target detection.