Next Generation Intelligent Radar

A confluence of several recent advances in adaptive radar technologies has created the opportunity for major advancement in "intelligent adaptive radar". Firstly, the appearance of fully digital AESA radars has provided the radar system engineer with unprecedented opportunities for rapid agility and adaptability - including pulse-to-pulse modulation agility/adaptivity. Second, recent advancements in the theory and design of adaptive waveform capability has matured to the point where new radar operating modes can be conceived that exploit the aforementioned fully digital transmit capability. Lastly, real-time knowledge-aided processing for radar has also matured to the point where the adaptivity of the radar (both on transmit and receive) can be intelligently regulated through precise environmental awareness. In this paper, all of these elements are combined to show how a new intelligent radar architecture can be conceived that not only acts "intelligently" on the receive chain, but also on the transmit side-in some ways analogous to nature\´s own intelligent sonar system: the bat.