Airport Surveillance Processing Chain for High Resolution Radar

The paper focuses on the design of the digital processing chain of a surface movement radar (SMR) for airport traffic in the frame of A-SMGCS (advanced-surface movements guidance and control system); in order to reach, or exceed, the demanding requirements for the A-SMGCS surveillance function, special attention has to be paid to SMR processing, whose main functional blocks are the CFAR (constant false alarm rate) processor, the plot extractor, and the track-while-scan (TWS). A description of these processing functions, tailored to a noncoherent, high-resolution radar, and of their implementation is provided. The performance evaluation is accompanied by trials on recorded data, as obtained from a national research and development project called fast prototyping (FP) project (2001-2003) and its subsequent activities. The aim of the work presented here is to give a system view of the radar processing chain for high-resolution SMR, being rather different than standard surveillance radar.