Ground surveillance with mmW radar for border control and camp protection applications

In a world where terrorism is threatening as well civilian people as the forces involved in peacekeeping and peace enforcing missions, the protection of borderlines of regions of interest as well as military camps is a necessary demand. To maintain day- and night performance under adverse weather conditions especially with the ability to cope with dust, fog and haze or snow, radar sensors are under development. Especially the millimetre wave region offers the additional advantage of small, light weight miniature sensors with the capability to accommodate a high signal bandwidth and thus high range resolution. To demonstrate these capabilities for both millimetre wave regions, Ka- and W-band, experiments were conducted jointly by EADS, Ulm, and FGAN-FHR, Wachtberg. A low cost and easily portable 35-GHz radar, originally designed for SAR applications in small UAVs, is used for automatic detection and recognition of moving hostile objects like persons and vehicles at distances of several kilometres in a strong ground clutter environment. A similar FM-CW radar operating at 94 GHz has been used under comparable environmental conditions to gather data at this radar band. It could be shown that possible foes will be recognized and exactly localized in range, azimuth and velocity. Possible applications of such sensors embedded in protection system concepts are presented as well as signature examples, algorithm approaches and results from outdoor experiments.