BACKGROUND

To search for potential radar threats, a typical EW (electronic warfare) system employs one or more swept superheat (superheterodyne) receivers to perform signal detection and identification. Threats can be classified into two categories:

• Low probability of intercept radar (LPI) threats

• Pulse and pulse Doppler (PR) random threats

There are many different types of radar signals that are intended threats for a swept superheat receiver ranging from duty cycle pulsed to continuous wave (CW) waveform. The primary purpose of this project was to perform a set of experiments using Taguchi Methods to optimize the performance and robustness of a generic swept superheat receiver in the detection and identification of radar threats in a dense and time-varying EW environment.

A dramatic improvement of time to intercept (TTI) performance was seen by using optimum levels of control factors derived from a series of Taguchi experiments. The TTI criterion is based on the root-mean-squared (RMS) elapsed time of the swept superheat receiver before intercepting randomly selected radar threats. However, it does not provide clear indication of the receiver's dynamic performance in intercepting all radar threats as they appear randomly in the EW environment.

This project was planned using the probability of miss (Pm) to detect and identify radar threats versus elapsed time (T) as the performance characteristics, which is more effective in evaluating the receiver in a dynamic EW environment.

PROCESS

Instead of evaluating the system by a static approach, a dynamic approach...