Cognitive diversity sensing

Radar sensing is and will continue to have great importance in both the civil and military communities. This importance will increase in proportion to the tasks that radar is able to reliably carry out. New methodologies and new technical capabilities offer the potential for new functionality and improvements in existing ones. Radar is currently going through a quiet revolution in which new methodologies are starting to be explored that highlight exiting new possibilities whilst demonstrating some of the challenges yet to be overcome. In this paper we examine the emerging topic of cognitive diversity sensing. Put simply this is the dynamic adjustment of radar parameters on both transmit and receive to maximize the extraction of desired information from the scene being surveyed. Further this brings into play the key topic of cognition exploiting the natural relationship between the sensor and the sensed. It is this combination that provides a powerful new paradigm based on diversity sensing for future radar systems. This has huge potential enabling autonomous capabilities right across the whole spectrum of radar applications.