Principles of Modern Radar - Volume 2 1891121537

17.6 Multichannel Processing for Detection Performance Improvement 797FIGURE 17-31Sketch of theacquisitiongeometry.Obviously, the scaling factor G CA should be modified, taking into account the exploitedintegration strategy over theN ch frequency channels [57].A comparison of the proposed integration strategies is reported in the following interms of achievable detection performance against real data. We considered the data collectedby a wideband PBR prototype developed and fielded at the DIET Department of theUniversity of Rome “La Sapienza” [55–58], based on a direct radio frequency samplingapproach. We show the results out of the acquisition campaigns that were carried out onMay 17 and May 18, 2007, by Riva di Traiano (Civitavecchia) about 70 km northwest ofRome, Italy. The reference antenna was steered toward a transmitter located about 70 kmaway, at Monte Argentario (approximately pointing to northwest), as illustrated in Figure17-31. The surveillance antenna was pointed at about 180 ◦ (approximately southeast)and covers, in its 3 dB pattern, the standard departure routes of the Leonardo da VinciAirport in Fiumicino (basically most of the routes for the northwest of Europe) as well asa number of the standard arrival routes that lead the aircrafts to join the descend path ofthe ILS for runway 34. A detailed analysis of the data in both temporal and spectral domainsuggested the selection of a limited number of FM radio channels (SFC 1–5) insidethe available frequency bandwidth (see Table 17-8). During the considered acquisitioncampaigns, several sequential data acquisitions were performed; each acquisition is ofabout 1.1 sec duration, with a temporal spacing of about 23 sec between two consecutiveacquisitions. Data sets acquired with this approach cover a total time duration of about1 hour (approximately 150 data files) for each day of the acquisition campaigns. Live AirTraffic Control (ATC) registrations were also collected for the same air space.To validate the performance of the SFC operation, all the available data files have beenprocessed, according to the processing techniques described in the previous sections. Forexample, Figure 17-32 shows the sequences of the detection results obtained for threeconsecutive data files on the same range-velocity map, separately for some of the selectedFM radio channels. The available ATC registrations have also been reported in each figure(small plots) for comparison. Different markers are used to indicate the plots detected bythe PBR at different file times. The identified plot sequences are indicated with circles using