Obstacle avoidance sensors for automatic Nap-of-the-Earth flight

This paper describes a 94 GHz active radar system designed to generate an accurate, three dimensional representation of the terrain and obstacles in the flight path of a helicopter. The data is to be used to provide signals to the guidance and control systems for automatic Nap-of-the-Earth (ANOE) Flight. The heart of the radar is the digital signal processor. The developmental digital signal processor architecture is PC based and uses commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) processing elements. The design is extremely flexible. It utilizes a commercial software analysis package to implement a virtual radar control panel as well as provide a display of the processed signals. This approach allows for rapid reconfiguration to efficiently incorporate on-going test results