Millimetre-wave radar applications in airports: experimental results

Surface Movement Radar (SMR) is the main sensor of A-SMGCS; one of the most common problems in SMR, specially of high resolution type, is plot extraction, as aircraft targets have extension up to 60 - 70 m as compared to typical radar resolution cells of 6 m x 0.4 degrees (3 m x 0.2 degrees in high resolution radar) and occupy hundreds of resolution cells. The resulting ??target splitting?? is a well-known phenomenon in SMGCS. Moreover, in situations where small targets - such as cars, persons, lost baggage, etc. are close to large targets such as aircraft, resolution must he guaranteed when separation is of the order of ten meters. Finally more and more information must he drawn from radar echoes in order to characterize, classificate and identify targets in a very dense environment. The availability of digitally recorded raw radar video (from the Fast Prototyping research project, Venice airport, 2001-2003) allowed the analysis and the processing of the data in the RadarLah of Tor Vergata University. These tests concerned extraction algorithms considering the processing chain from the AID converter to the formation of the plot.