Performance Evaluation of Multi-Modal Radar Signal Processing in Dense Environments

The widescale deployment of radars, distributed across a platform and across multiple platforms for reliable 360° situational awareness (SA), introduces the challenge of radar interference. Interference can broadly be categorised as self-interference (between radars mounted on the same platform) and mutual interference (signals received from radars on other platforms). Both types of interference impede the reliability of SA delivered by such systems, particularly in dense environments where numerous radars operate simultaneously within the same frequency band. This work presents a comprehensive evaluation of a multi-modal beamforming approach that combines unfocused synthetic aperture radar with the traditional Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output beamformer to enhance radar resolution and suppress interference. Additionally, various aspects of sensor configurations defining hardware and software capabilities of state-of-the-art radars are discussed, and a systematic analysis of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio at each step of the processing is presented. Extensive simulations and experimental results in both automotive and maritime environments are shown to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.