Reduction in Cost of Phased Array RADARs Using Cognitive RADAR Techniques

Cognitive Radars have the advantage of reducing tracking error, compared to the classical radars, using adaptive waveform design in each transmission with respect to the dynamic parameters of the target. The main idea of this paper is to use this superiority to propose a new paradigm in system design of radars. First, a classic system design of a test bench radar is studied in this paper. In this design paradigm, antenna specifications is determined based on tracking error requirements. In this, we propose to determine the antenna specifications and beamwidth based on the angular resolutions and to use cognitive radars capabilities for reducing the tracking errors. Comparing these two design, we find out that considering a constant tracking error, using cognitive radar elements would lead to a serious reduction in antenna elements in phased arrays radar, and thus, a reduction in cost of the radar. This reduction in array element numbers, depending on the value of angular accuracy and angular resolution, might be as much as half.