Application of aerostat radars to drug interdiction

The application of aerostat radars for the purpose of detecting and tracking low flying aircraft and small ships used for drug smuggling is an example of an application of technology to nonmilitary purposes. Sophisticated coherent radars that include moving target indication (MTI) and pulse compression processing to achieve the target extraction from clutter have been adapted from military coherent radars. The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is reviewing the design of the aerostat radar and is tasked to perform field test measurements to verify the achievement of the clutter rejection ratios. GTRI has developed a special calibrated Doppler producing target, as well as a large stationary target, for testing MTI performance of the aerostat radars. One of the factors critical in evaluating the MTI performance is that of accounting for the effects of multipath interference on the measurements. GTRI is planning to use a refined measurement method with a field probe to characterize the effects of multipath interference and insert the field probe results into a GTRI model to correct for the effects of multipath interference