Multifunctional millimeter-wave radar system for helicopter safety

Goshi, D.S.; Case, Timothy J.; McKitterick, J.B.; Bui, L.Q.

doi:10.1117/12.920828

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The resulting cable structure provides unique scattering properties at MMW frequencies, and can be exploited from the radar's perspective of detecting and identifying such an obstacle. The scattering phenomenology of power line structures has been investigated since around the early 80's by a number of authors, with modeling, simulation, and experiments typically performed over the 10,35, and 94 GHz frequency bands [6]- [9]. Some of these principles and results of these studies will be discussed here to establish a baseline, but the general phenomenology and detailed formulation will not be redeveloped here.…”

Section: Scattering Phenomenamentioning

confidence: 97%

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Power line characterization from an airborne data collection with a millimeter wave radar

Goshi

Bui

2014

SPIE Proceedings

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Enhancing the operational safety of small, maneuverable rotorcraft has been a critical consideration in the development of next generation situational awareness sensor suites. From landing assistance to target detection and obstacle avoidance, millimeter wave radars have become the leading candidate for such solutions due to their ability to operate in degraded visual environments, whether it is weather, induced debris, or night conditions that must be dealt with. Power lines pose arguably the largest safety risk for helicopter operation due to their difficulty in detection and proper identification to support avoidance maneuvering, where even under perfect conditions they can be nearly invisible to the naked eye. The backscatter phenomenology from braided power lines has been well-studied and formulated in previous literature, albeit mainly in controlled laboratory settings or limited field trials. Subsequently, the ability to simply detect power lines at operational distances up to around 2 km has been demonstrated. In this work, an analysis is performed on the measureable characteristics of power lines captured in a representative operational environment for helicopters. The test location included a diverse set of power line configurations with surrounding ground and tower clutter, representing a realistic scenario. A radiometrically calibrated w-band real-beam FMCW sensor allows the study and estimation of target RCS, as well as evaluation against the developed theory. All analysis is performed on dynamically captured data from a helicopter, where platform dynamics and system stability also play a significant role in a processed result. Results from this work will aid the effective development of next generation situational awareness systems.

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Section: Scattering Phenomenamentioning

confidence: 97%

“…3 are some of the key operating parameters of the radar. Further detail on the features and performance of the sensor have been discussed extensively in previously published work and can be found in [10], [11], as well as their associated references.…”

Section: The Radar Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Power line characterization from an airborne data collection with a millimeter wave radar

Goshi

Bui

2014

SPIE Proceedings

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“…Power lines pose the most serious threat to the safety of helicopters [1,2], and the detection of the power lines has always been a focus of the research on helicopter collision avoidance. Millimeter wave radar is an effective means of all-weather power line detection [3][4][5][6][7]. The characteristics of stranded power lines can generate Bragg scattering in the millimeter wave band [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Improved RCS Calculation Method for Power Lines Combining Characteristic Mode with SMWA

Chen

Yang

et al. 2022

Electronics

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The radar cross-section (RCS) of power lines has an important significance for detection of the power lines. The method of moments (MoM) can calculate the RCS of power lines. However, the efficiency of the MoM is limited by the time-consuming computing process, as well as the expensive storage overhead. In order to enhance the efficiency and reduce the storage of the RCS calculation of power lines, we propose an RCS calculation method that combines the characteristic mode (CM) with a Sherman–Morrison–Woodbury formula-based algorithm (SMWA), which is referred to as a CM-SMWA. CMs are used as the basis functions for reducing the dimension of the MoM impedance matrix, and the SMWA is applied to directly solve the CMs-reduced matrix equation, which can reduce the computational time and storage. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method can obtain the RCS of power lines, with different incident angles and different polarizations, at a higher efficiency. At 35 GHz, compared with the conventional MoM, for a typical LGJ50-8 power line with a length of 0.276 m, the computation time is reduced by 62.4% and the memory occupation is reduced by 96.4%.

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“…Many researchers developed optical sensors to improve the safety of low-flying helicopters [ 1 , 3 , 4 ]. However, optical sensors are highly sensitive to atmospheric conditions, such as clouds, fog, smoke, dust and precipitation [ 9 , 10 ]. Radar provides robustness to atmospheric conditions, and it is widely used in a low-flying helicopters to sense the surrounding environment [ 2 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, optical sensors are highly sensitive to atmospheric conditions, such as clouds, fog, smoke, dust and precipitation [ 9 , 10 ]. Radar provides robustness to atmospheric conditions, and it is widely used in a low-flying helicopters to sense the surrounding environment [ 2 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. Automatic detection of obstacles would help conserve the pilot’s attention for the mission tasks, thus contributing to mission success and, most importantly, saving lives [ 4 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automatic Censoring CFAR Detector Based on Ordered Data Difference for Low-Flying Helicopter Safety

Jiang

Huang

Yang

2016

Sensors

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Abstract:Being equipped with a millimeter-wave radar allows a low-flying helicopter to sense the surroundings in real time, which significantly increases its safety. However, nonhomogeneous clutter environments, such as a multiple target situation and a clutter edge environment, can dramatically affect the radar signal detection performance. In order to improve the radar signal detection performance in nonhomogeneous clutter environments, this paper proposes a new automatic censored cell averaging CFAR detector. The proposed CFAR detector does not require any prior information about the background environment and uses the hypothesis test of the first-order difference (FOD) result of ordered data to reject the unwanted samples in the reference window. After censoring the unwanted ranked cells, the remaining samples are combined to form an estimate of the background power level, thus getting better radar signal detection performance. The simulation results show that the FOD-CFAR detector provides low loss CFAR performance in a homogeneous environment and also performs robustly in nonhomogeneous environments. Furthermore, the measured results of a low-flying helicopter validate the basic performance of the proposed method.

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Multifunctional millimeter-wave radar system for helicopter safety

Cited by 7 publications

References 5 publications

Power line characterization from an airborne data collection with a millimeter wave radar

Power line characterization from an airborne data collection with a millimeter wave radar

An Improved RCS Calculation Method for Power Lines Combining Characteristic Mode with SMWA

Automatic Censoring CFAR Detector Based on Ordered Data Difference for Low-Flying Helicopter Safety

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