A special capability offered by the Radar Signature Management Group enables target RCS and imaging measurements to be made in the operational environment. The subject platform can in these circumstances, for example, make representative operational manoeuvres or deploy countermeasures such as chaff. The Company owns and operates three mobile, fully instrumented, measurement radar systems, allowing signature data to be gathered from land, sea or airborne locations. Comprehensive measurements are possible in all the radar threat bands from 100 MHz through to 100 GHz.

The radars have been specifically designed and developed to provide state-of-the-art performance at trials locations worldwide. International acceptance of this capability has resulted in the radars having been used throughout the UK, Europe and in the USA, on a variety of different platforms. The performance offered by these advanced radars is exceptional, and they utilise both frequency and polarisation agility, on a pulse-by-pulse basis, in order to acquire high resolution measurement data simultaneously. In addition to their pulse by pulse agility, the radars also utilise a variety of wide-band intra-pulse modulation bandwidths enabling the achievement of ultra-high range discrimination. Target imaging has been achieved to better than 10 cm resolution from the air.

ADAS – Airborne Data Acquisition System ADAS, has been specifically designed to be operated from different airborne platforms. This configuration is fully CAA approved for operation from a commercial Squirrel helicopter, offering an extremely cost-effective and advanced airborne measurement facility.

Targets can be tracked in their operating environment using optical, and radar tracking techniques, to ensure consistent illumination of the subject platform during the radar data gathering exercise. 

The ADAS has recently been upgraded with navigation sensor fit that consists of a DGPS and IMU to support low frequency SAR applications. 

Future planned upgrades include a full motion compensation solution encompassing different antenna steering techniques, and other signatures such as IR.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION Operates from airborne platforms Multi-mode Multi-band Fully Coherent Fully Polarimetric Frequency Bands A, B & C 100 to 600 MHz F 2.9 to 3.4 GHz I 9.0 to 11.25 GHz J 15.5 to 16.0 GHz Polarisations Linear vertical and horizontal Circular left and right-hand Pedestals Azimuth and elevation control using boresighted optical tracking system Sector scanning at up to 40 deg/s Antennas Various (to suit application)

Modes Frequency-agile Polarisation-agile Pulse-by-pulse data recording to Ampex DCRSi or compatible media User-definable transmit waveforms up to 32 k samples 1 to 40 kHz PRF User-selectable range ambits (768 to 12288 cells) Simultaneous two-channel, co and/or cross polar receiver Up to 500 MHz instantaneous bandwidth (2.25 GHz using eight 500 MHz 50% overlapped pulses) Data sampling at 100, 250 or 500 MHz DATA GATHERING MODES High Range Resolution 0.36 m using DPDPS linear chirp modulation over 500 MHz bandwidth 768 to 12288 contiguous 0.3 m range cells Ultra High Range Resolution 0.1 m using DPDPS linear chirp modulation over 2.25 GHz bandwidth (eight 500 MHz 50% overlapped pulses) 3072 to 49152 contiguous 0.075 m range cells

These unique facilities are fully supported by experienced staff, who manage the trials as well as carrying out the measurements and preparing detailed reports on the results. The facilities, complete with full support staff can be leased on a daily basis for demanding radar signature trials at any location.