CAREER: Exploring Dynamic Antenna Arrays for New Radar Sensing Modalities

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Continual improvement of microwave wireless systems is critical to sustaining new developments in many applications like radar, remote sensing and communications, as well as advancements in broader science and society. However, the ability to improve radio frequency and microwave wireless functionality is inhibited by the platform-centric model in place today, where capability improvements must be achieved by developing new individual systems. Such improvements must often occur without increasing the size, weight, and power of the system, since increasing transmit energy, signal gain, or spatial diversity will result in larger size, aperture, or power, if not all three. This research seeks to break the platform-centric paradigm by investigating new techniques in dynamic distributed antenna arrays, where individual elements in a distributed antenna array use dynamics in time and space to significantly enhance the system functionality. Such dynamic arrays will lead to improvements of radar systems, enabling greater capabilities for sensing the earth and its atmosphere from satellites, improving target discrimination in military radar, and enabling greater safety on autonomous vehicles. In addition, the project will implement an educational plan for teaching new perspectives of antenna array theory and new antenna array design concepts. The outreach plan will educate under-represented student groups in engineering, both at the college and secondary levels, to help expand STEM education in central Michigan.The goal of this research is to explore the use of spatial and temporal dynamics of distributed antenna arrays to create new modalities for radar and remote sensing. In particular, this research will advance knowledge by exploring theoretical methods of formulating array concepts in terms of a physical antenna array dynamics with waveform dynamics, and will investigate new sensing modalities leveraging dynamic antenna arrays. Recent developments by the PI's group and others have led to dramatically increased connectivity between sensors on mobile platforms such as UAVs and autonomous vehicles. Such connectivity and mobility set the stage for truly distributed sensing capabilities, where a new dimension of control and motion of the array elements can be exploited in innovative ways. This research will explore how spatio-temporal dynamics in such distributed arrays can be formulated, analyzed, implemented, and utilized to create new remote sensing modalities. Specifically, the project has the following objectives: 1) Obtain a systematic theory of spatio-temporal modulation in antenna arrays whose elements are dynamic in space and frequency. This will develop the foundations of a new antenna array theory that incorporates spatial frequency domain antenna analysis and spatio-temporal dynamics to open a new dimension of control enabled by dynamic movement of the array elements. 2) Explore the capabilities enabled by dynamic antenna arrays for new radar and remote sensing measurements. This will lead to orders-of-magnitude improvements in the angular resolution of radar measurements, and will enable the creation of new radar measurements.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.