Discussing millimeter wave pencil beam radar for terrain visualization

The DLR project ALLFlight (Assisted Low Level Flight and Landing on Unprepared Landing Sites) is devoted to demonstrating and evaluating the characteristics of sensors for helicopter operations in degraded visual environments. To successfully enhance the pilots abilities to control a helicopter in brown-out technologies are inspected that penetrate the blocked vision. Millimeter wave radar may provide the best dust penetration capabilities, however it delivers a lower angular resolution compared to other sensors. Efforts been made to simulate different sensor technologies. Among those a millimeter wave pencil beam radar simulation was implemented. In cooperation with the NRC, flight tests on a Bell 205 were conducted to gather sensor data from a 35 GHz pencil beam radar for terrain mapping, obstacle detection and dust penetration in order to highlight the capabilities of this sensor. In this paper preliminary results from the terrain mapping flight trials at NRC are presented and a description of the radar´s general capability is shown. A discussion reflects the authors´ opinion about effective usage of millimeter wave radar technology in degraded visual environments.