MIMO radar for sense and avoid for UAV

UAV are easily deployable platforms. Up to now they carry payloads (surveillance, combat) for military purposes in crisis or war time. For training, UAV are flown in special areas attributed in a limited space and a limited time slot. In the future, UAV will also be used for civilian tasks. For these reasons, UAV will have to be inserted in the general Air traffic and “Sense and Avoid” systems will be mandatory. Among the possible sensors, the radar is the most pertinent one: it is “all-weather” and provides accurate range, direction and closing speed. In this paper, a low cost solution based on the coherent “MIMO” principles is described. This solution allows the location of the radar within the UAV airframe without any moving parts, hence provides a high reliability level. The rationale of the proposed architecture is explained, then the enabling technologies and related waveforms are described.