SBIR-STTR Award

Today, the Army utilizes multiple radar systems with overlapping areas of responsibility to provide RF sensing for battlefield Air Surveillance (AS), Air Defense (AD), Counterfire Target Acquisition (CTA), and other missions. While each mission has unique challenges and requirements, enhancements in sensor hardware technology, including digital beamforming (DBF) and arbitrary waveform generation, provide the requisite foundation of adaptability and real-time reconfiguration to realize a proactive multi-mission radar that anticipates sensor utilization needs to optimize forward.To address these challenges Spear Research, LLC (Spear) has formulated a holistic Multi-Mission Resource Manager (MMRM) that optimizes use of limited resources, while forecasting mission performance, to proactively direct a highly effective multi-mission radar.Resource Manager,Multi-objective optimization,multi mission radar,adaptive arrays,proactive radar

Today, the Army’s spectral dominance is achieved via disparate systems that require individualized life cycle support, complex and time consuming spectral deconfliction, and extensive development effort to counter evolving threat sets. These single-purpose systems are traditionally composed of subsystems with proprietary interfaces that inherently limit module reuse and promote sole-source vendor selection over open competition. This inhibits potential technological and cost enhancements. Recent developments in enabling sensor technology such as digital beamforming, high capacity computing, and arbitrary waveform generation provide the requisite hardware foundation for a single multi-mission radar capable of providing battlefield Air Surveillance (AS), Air Defense (AD), and Counterfire Target Acquisition (CTA). Furthermore, current systems that perform multiple missions are often unable to perform those missions in parallel. Under strenuous mission loads, these radars will not have enough resources to sequentially perform all required tasks in optimal fashion. Balancing the competing time and energy needs of each mission in a single system while providing an effectiveness assessment requires a novel approach to intelligent resource management. To address these challenges Spear Research, LLC has formulated a holistic Multi-Mission Resource Manager (MMRM) that optimizes use of limited resources, while forecasting mission performance, to proactively direct a highly effective multi-mission radar.