Towards the intelligent adaptive radar network

In recent years there have been two significant and related developments that seem set to lead to new and improved radar capability. These are: (i) diversity, in the form of highly flexible digital technology and (ii) the early adoption of intelligent or cognitive processing techniques. Together these provide a powerful combination that are helping to pave the way to intelligent adaptive radar networks. In this paper we examine the relative merits of different forms of network and how they provide for improvements in radar performance. In addition we review systems, found in nature that can provide a route to synthetic intelligence exploitable in the adaptive radar network of the future.