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sonar systems that are more effective than ever before. ing for the echo when these sounds
bounce off marine objects operat-
ing on or below the surface of the
BY J.R. Wilson
water. Passive sonar, on the other
hand, simply involves sophisticated
Although radar first was explored in the late 1800s, this RF sensor hydrophones that listen for telltale
technology did not become a vital part of military operations until sounds of ships and submarines.
World War II. The term radio detection and ranging (radar), in fact, Passive is the more popular meth-
first was coined by the U.S. Signal Corps in 1939 during its work for od because it doesn’t give away the
the U.S. Navy. As its name suggests, radar transmits radio waves user’s presence.
through the air and watches for any of these radio waves that Radar and active sonar can pres-
bounce off aircraft or other airborne targets. ent disadvantages to their users
Sonar, short for sound navigation and ranging, can trace its ori- because of their transmitted RF
gin to Leonardo da Vinci’s 1490 experiments listening to a tube energy and sound signals, which
inserted in the water to detect sounds generated by boats. More an enemy can detect. These sen-
active efforts at depth sounding and echo ranging came following sor methods are like shining a
the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. Anti-submarine warfare during flashlight in a dark room: They can
World War I spurred development, but useful active and passive reveal targets, but tip the enemy off
sonars were a product of World War II in the 1940s. to their presence.
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This graphic depicts adaptive radar, which will sample the operating environment and nearby threats to determine the best way to avoid
enemy jamming.
For this reason, submarines rare- and adaptive sonar, which can auto- engineering manager for radar sys-
ly have employed active sonar. Once matically select RF waveforms and tems at the Harris Corp. Radar and
a submarine pings active, the ene- processing filters in real time, based Reconnaissance Systems segment in
my knows he’s there, and this is on the mission and changing envi- Palm Bay, Fla.
anathema to the submarine’s core ronmental conditions and target Today’s state-of-the-art adaptive
mission, which is to remain as countermeasures. radar and sonar capitalize not only
stealthy as possible. on enabling technologies like AESA,
The more common users of Adaptive radar and sonar back-end software control, and pro-
active sonar are surface ships, Adaptive radar and sonar systems cessing, but also on enabling tech-
and even these vessels still ping reach out and touch the environ- nologies for multifunction systems
an active sonar signal only brief- ment in which they are operating, that blend communications, elec-
ly to minimize the risk of detection. and change their signals and digital tronic warfare (EW), detection and
Perhaps the most common user of signal processing for the best ways tracking, and weather forecasting,
active sonar are sonobuoys dropped of finding their targets and remain- Hennessey says. “The multifunc-
by helicopters and fixed-wing air- ing as stealthy as possible. tion systems use adaptive wave-
craft. These air-dropped sonar sen- “We’ve had adaptive process- forms, software-defined, that enable
sors don’t have to remain stealthy; ing systems for many decades, multi-mission capability by having
once they’re deployed, the enemy but adaptive radar processing — an RF front-end that supports wide
knows he’s being hunted. real-time adapting of radar wave- bandwidths and real-time control
The fast pace of technology over forms — has really picked up in while the software back-ends define
the past two decades enabled devel- the past decade through a number the mission — radar, communica-
opment of a new form of radar and of enabling technologies, such as tions, EW,” he says.
sonar that is neither all-active nor AESA [active electronically scanned That also applies to adaptive
all-passive. It’s called adaptive radar array],” explains Garrett Hennessey, sonar, says Jim Brunelle, manager of
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A Navy submarine-hunting MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter takes off from the flight deck of the
aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69).
operations so the operators don’t letting him operate at a higher lev- system reports tracks to the CMS,
have to be as experienced or wor- el while the sonar does the grunt and the CMS operator, in natural
ry about how to set something up work,” Lundrigan says. “Adaptive language, can ask the sonar why it
as opposed to what the system can methods help us do that. The natu- thinks the track is real.”
do autonomously, and, of course, ral path is to make the signal, dis-
more cheaply. So we are continu- play, and data processing more auto- Cognitive radar
ously driven to find more cost-ef- matic, eventually to the point where Future forms of adaptive radar are
fective equipment and methods of you don’t need a sonar operator. The sometimes referred to as cognitive
doing things, plus building systems
that are upwardly compatible with
evolving technology. But it’s critical
for the U.S. to maintain superiori-
ty in the ability to monitor the envi-
AIA
CONVERTER
• Up to 4 Isolated Outputs
Systems automation
• Parallel or Serial Connections
“All these technology advances have • -40~+85°C Ambient (-55°C Option),
enabled us to move from just look- Conduction Cooled Operation
• Ultra-Wide input ranges:
ing at signals and noise to detec-
- 9~45Vdc (transient 60Vdc/100ms)
tions and alerts and tracks, so we’re - 16~80Vdc (transient 100Vdc/100ms)
now at a very high point in the hier- • Reverse Polarity Protection
archy so the sonar operator can get • Inrush Current Limiting
real information that lets him do his • Advanced Status & Control
- Global Output Enable / Inhibit
job better,” Lundrigan says. “We’re - Individual Voltage Enable / Inhibit
finding, internationally and domes- - Synchronization In/Out (560kHZ)
- Over Temperature Monitor
tically, that sonar proficiency is a - Remote Sense (≤10% compensation)
perishable skill and there was a pe- - Output Voltage Trimming
- Output Current Trimming
riod when giving the operator a high - Active Current Share (± 5% Accuracy)
degree of control worked against • Up to 88% efficiency
him because there was just too
much information available.”
The answer to the problem of
operator overload has been sys-
tem automation. “Now the empha-
sis is on automating the technology,
w w w . g a i a - c o n v e r t e r. c o m
www.militaryaerospace.com MILITARY & AEROSPACE ELECTRONICS F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 7 13
radar, as described in a paper pub- and tracking by exploiting various agile waveforms. Future radars like-
lished in the February 2015 issue of knowledge sources.” ly will present an even greater chal-
IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing As with any military technolo- lenge as they will be capable of
and written by Anish Turlapaty, a gy, advances in capability spur the sensing the environment and adapt-
postdoctoral research associate, and development of more advanced ing transmissions and signal pro-
Yuanwei Jin, an associate professor countermeasures. Given efforts in cessing to maximize performance
of electrical engineering, in the De- adaptive radar and sonar systems and mitigate interference effects.
partment of Engineering and Avi- by other nations, including poten- “The goal of the ARC program is
ation Sciences at the University of tial future adversaries, the U.S. is to enable U.S. airborne EW systems
Maryland. pursuing ways to thwart them. to automatically generate effec-
“Cognitive radar is an emerg- One major effort is the Adaptive tive countermeasures against new,
ing technology that aims to explore Radar Countermeasures (ARC) pro- unknown, and adaptive radars in
a higher level of sensing adapta- gram of the U.S. Defense Advanced real time in the field,” the Agency’s
tion and biologically inspired intel- Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program description explains. ARC
ligence for modern radar design, in Arlington, Va. technology will:
Turlapaty and Jin wrote. “It is gener- According to DARPA researchers, • isolate unknown radar signals
in the presence of other hostile,
friendly and neutral signals;
• deduce the threat posed
by that radar;
• synthesize and transmit
countermeasure signals to
achieve a desired effect on the
threat radar; and
• assess the effectiveness
of countermeasures based
on over-the-air observable
threat behaviors.
“ARC technologies will be developed
using an open architecture to al-
low for insertion, modification, and
removal of software modules with
minimal effect on other elements
of the system,” DARPA officials say.
“ARC algorithms and signal process-
A sonar technician aboard the Navy cruiser USS Vella Gulf (CG 72) monitors undersea contacts ing software will be suitable for new
during an anti-submarine warfare drill. (Navy photo.) EW systems and for retrofitting into
existing EW systems without exten-
ally believed that a cognitive radar current airborne electronic warfare sive rework of front-end, radio-fre-
comprises the processes of feed- (EW) systems first must identify a quency hardware.”
back, learning, information preser- threat radar to determine the appro-
vation, and adaptability in trans- priate preprogrammed electron- Machine intelligence
mission. It adapts its transmission ic countermeasure (ECM) technique. U.S. and allied EW aircraft typical-
waveforms, radar beams, and other This approach loses effectiveness as ly carry out missions using a library
electronic data processing capabili- radars evolve from fixed analog sys- of profiles to counter known adver-
ties in order to achieve superior per- tems to programmable digital vari- sary capabilities to jam their radar,
formance in detection, estimation ants with unknown behaviors and but advances in software-defined,
reprogrammable systems have made algorithm development for the pro- a closed-loop test environment. We
that method obsolete. gram’s third phase, advance readi- will now continue to mature the
As adversary radars continue to ness testing, and milestones for technology and test it against the
move away from analog systems to moving ARC technologies to fifth- most advanced radars in the U.S.
rapidly evolving programmable dig- generation fighter jets. inventory in order to transition this
ital variants with agile waveforms “In Phase 2, we demonstrated the important technology to the war-
and unknown behaviors, solutions ability to characterize and adap- fighter,” says BAE Program Manager
that cannot be developed in theater, tively counter advanced threats in Louis Trebaol.
in real time, are useless. Moreover,
they threaten the safety and mis-
sion of U.S. and allied warfighters.
In a speech to the Atlantic Council
®
in May 2016, DARPA Director Arati
Prabhakar described the threat, as
High Speed Board to Board
well as DARPA’s efforts to count-
er it with adaptive radar and ARC. Compliant Connector
“[Aircraft are] getting pinged by
radar signals that we’ve never
encountered before and it’s just one
reflection of how rapidly technology
is changing in the world,” she told
the Council. “When that happens
today, it can be weeks to months to
literally years before they’re able to
Magnified View of Pins Arranged in a
Solderless Board-to-Board Interconnect
get the kind of protection they need using InvisipinÆ
Coaxial RF Configuration
(shown with compression stop)
Prabhakar says.
In November 2016, DARPA
extended an existing ARC contract
with the BAE Systems Electronic
Systems segment in Merrimack,
N.H., designed to enable air- www.RDIS.com/MA MA@RDIS.com 610-443-2299
borne EW systems to counter new,
©2015 R&D Interconnect Solutions. All rights reserved. R&D Interconnect Solutions, Invisipin, and RDIS.com are
unknown, and adaptive radars trademarks of R&D Interconnect Solutions .
The goal is to counter the lim- threat you want to watch more at Wright-Patterson Air Force
itations of current systems that closely, an adaptive system can Base, Ohio, issued a contract to
were built to deal with a more stat- direct more resources at that threat Information Systems Laboratories
ic, less dynamic, and less ambig- specifically than a non-adaptive sys- (ISL) Inc. in San Diego to develop an
uous environment. By relying on tem could do.” advanced modeling and simulation
a database of known threats with The ARC program’s cognitive EW capability for fully adaptive radar.
predefined countermeasures, cur- technologies, which DARPA began “Due to onerous requirements
rent EW systems are severely limit- pioneering in 2010, are being devel- imposed by anti-access/area deni-
ed in terms of adapting to new and oped to deal with anti-access and al environments, it is imperative to
advanced threats in theater in real area denial environments using develop innovative signal and data
time. Conducting successful mis- advanced signal processing, intelli- processing techniques for delivering
sions in future anti-access and area gent algorithms, and machine learn- sophisticated sensing capabilities
denial (A2/AD) environments will ing techniques as part of an evo- to the warfighter,” according to the
require the ability to isolate previ- lution of adaptive and cognitive program solicitation. “Modeling and
ously unknown hostile radar signals EW facing increasingly more agile, simulation plays a critical role for
in dense electromagnetic environ- complex, and adaptable threats fully adaptive radar due to the need
ments, then rapidly generate effec- in real time. The next major ARC for real-time generation of represen-
tive countermeasures. milestone is a planned 2018 flight tative scenarios from the standpoint
demonstration. of capturing the dynamically vary-
Optimizing resources Other military research labs ing statistical and spectral proper-
“Adaptive systems dynamically op- also are working to advance adap- ties of the environment.”
timize their resources to efficient- tive radar technology and counter- Enabling technologies like galli-
ly meet mission requirements, measures. In May 2016, the U.S. Air um nitride (GaN), which matured as
selecting waveforms and opera- Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)
tional parameters to fit the mis-
sion at hand. If you had a system
that was non-adaptive, say an air-
borne search radar, you would have
to use maximum power for the ra-
dar at all times; an adaptive system
can maintain that track without us-
ing more power than needed,” says
Harris’s Hennessey.
“Another important part is being
able to align the search volume to
where the aircraft is going and not
necessarily where it is pointing. If
you have a cue coming from anoth-
er sensor, on- or off-board, an adap-
tive system can point the radar at
that position rather than having
to search for it,” Hennessey says.
“Adaptive systems also are able to
increase the probability of detec-
tion by directing more RF energy on A Navy sonar technician stands watch in the combat information center during an anti-
targets or tracks, increasing update submarine warfare exercise aboard the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS
rates. So if you have a particular Chancellorsville (CG 62). Navy photo.
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