The missile defense mission will require wideband radars to perform target imaging, discrimination, and kill assessment of incoming vehicles. Such radars generally produce range-compressed images with fine range resolution (< 1m), a small range extent, and a relatively small number of range bins (1000 to 2000). However, there are applications within the missile defense mission that may require a much wider range extent while retaining fine resolution, and thus a correspondingly larger number of range bins (e.g., 10,000 to 100,000), to enhance the discrimination of targets in complex RF environments containing strong scatterers, clutter, chaff, decoys, etc. The requirement to generate a large number of range bins from a wideband radar pulse places extreme demands on the return pulse processor. It would be very difficult and expensive to construct an all-digital processor to perform the real-time, wide-bandwidth, high-resolution spectral analysis of return pulses that is needed to create range-compressed images. Alternatively, analog optical processing techniques may offer an attractive means to perform this function. The objective of this investigation is to assess the technical feasibility of optical processor architectures that can perform such spectral analysis, and thus can provide a large number, or even a variable number, of range bins. The benefit of this successful technology would allow the use of wideband, arbitrary waveforms for missile defense radars. The proposed program builds on the current MDA work on the Advanced Optical Processor, which currently uses advanced waveforms. The proposed optical processor will offer the same benefit while extending the range imaging space by up to 100' larger range gates, which means that more potential targets can be imaged with the same radar pulse and hardware. These benefits will reduce the hardware and life-cycle costs of the radar while resulting in a higher probability of destroying the current and emerging missile threats. The commercial use of this product could be of benefit to the optical instrumentation test equipment manufacturers such as Agilent, Tektronix, and Burleigh. Essex currently is discussing the use of related optical techniques for spectral channelization with these companies, and the architecture(s) developed under this Phase I program could be another resource for their equipment.
Keywords: Optical Processing, Optical Spectrum Analysis, Folded Spectrum Analysis, Range-Compression, Range-Doppler Radar, Missile Defense
