Operational application of an adaptive beamforming approach for angular track estimation in survey radars

Abstract

In the last years many space surveillance initiatives started to deal with the resident space objects overpopulation, by relying on the use of on-ground sensors. In particular, survey radars allow to first characterize the target orbit from a single transit, through measurements which are Doppler shift, slant range and angular profile. In this framework, the Music Approach for Track Estimate and Refinement (MATER) algorithm was developed to compute the angular track in survey radars provided with an array receiver, such as BIRALES sensor, which represents the baseline of the work. The paper presents MATER algorithm and its extension to derive the angular track when multiple sources are simultaneously detected. This is fundamental in survey applications, fragments cloud observations and proximity operations monitoring. Real BIRALES observations are finally discussed.