No label defined (Q4494523)

The name radar which is an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging was coined in late 1940, but the earliest radar-like devices pre-date this appellation by almost four decades. The basic principles underlying radar systems can be traced back to James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz. The distinction of ``first electromagnetic response target-location device'' is generally awarded to an electromagnetic ship anti-collision system invented by Christian Hülsmeyer in 1904 [\textit{E. Baur}, Einführung in die Radartechnik. B. G. Teubner, Stuttgart (1985); \textit{J. Detlefsen}, Radartechnik. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York (1989)]. The advent of solid-state electronic technology has had a significant impact on radar development, and technological progress in the 1960s was prodigious and diverse. Since this period, modern radar is an electronic system that operates by transmitting energy at the microwave frequency range into the external environment and obtaining echo information concerning the location, indication and classification of targets of interest by detecting reflections of the transmitted energy. Improvements in radar signal sensitivity and the application of Doppler filter banks for determining target speed enabled surveillance and tracking radar systems to meet the more demanding requirements imposed by high-speed jet aircraft. Their design results in a long list of engineering compromises that are chosen to solve the combined problem of detecting scattering targets at maximum range and allowing for the application of standard signal processing algorithms. Significantly, the tendency toward computer control of radar systems and space-time adaptive signal processing of radar signal data has become a ``theme'' in modern radar research [\textit{M. L. Honig} and \textit{D. G. Messerschmidt}, Adaptive Filters: Structures, Algorithms, and Applications. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston (1984; Zbl 0565.94001); \textit{M. G. Bellanger}, Adaptive Digital Filters and Signal Analysis Marcel Dekker, New York, Basel (1987); \textit{S. Haykin}, Adaptive Filter Theory, 2nd ed. Prentice Hall International, Englewood Cliffs, New York (1991; Zbl 0723.93070); \textit{R. Nitzbert}, Radar Signal Processing and Adaptive Systems, 2nd ed. Artech House, Boston, London (1999)]. Within the context of microwave radar imaging, several important accomplishments were made at this time: High-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging was introduced in the middle of the 1960s, and a high range resolution imaging system was developed a little later. Optical holographic methods had a significant influence to SAR and inverse SAR (ISAR) because the wavefront reconstruction technique of coherent imagery allowed to achieve resolution hundreds, or even thousands of times finer than the diffraction limit of the actual receiving antenna, particularly in the microwave wavelength region where development has been concentrated [\textit{E. N. Leith}, Optical processing of synthetic aperture radar data. In: Photonic Aspects of Modern Radar, in H. Zmuda and E. N. Toughlian (eds.), pp. 381-401, Artech House, Boston, London (1994); \textit{E. N. Leith}, Synthetic aperture radar. In: Optical Data Processing: Applications. Topics in Applied Physics, Vol 23, D. Casasent, (ed.), pp. 89-117, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York (1978); \textit{M. King}, Fourier optics and radar signal processing. In: Applications of Optical Fourier Transforms, H. Stark (ed.), pp. 209-251, Academic Press, Orlando (1982); \textit{J. P. Fitch}, Synthetic Aperture Radar. Springer-Verlag, New York, Berlin, Heidelberg (1988); \textit{G. O. Reynolds}, \textit{J. B. DeVelis}, \textit{G. B. Parrent jun}., and \textit{B. J. Thompson}, The New Physical Optics Notebook. SPIE, The International Society for Optical Engineering, Bellingham, WA (1989); \textit{D. Blacknell}, The resampling of synthetic aperture radar images. In: Mathematics in Remote Sensing, S. R. Brooks (ed.), pp. 173-188, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1989; Zbl 0705.62097); \textit{M. Soumekh}, Synthetic Aperture Radar Signal Processing with MATLAB Algorithms. John Wiley \& Sons, New York, Chichester, Weinheim (1999)]. It allowed to perform the first first extensive studies of radar-based target recognition. The book under review which is written by a radar practitioner stemming from the digital imagery era, is intended as an executive summary. It deals with microwave radar fundamentals, discusses imaging radar including SAR/ISAR digital imagery, and also covers other important topics such as space-time adaptive signal processing, air-to-air radar, moving target indication, bistatic and low-probability of intercept radar, and such applications as weather radar and ground-penetrating radar. Most of this material and the analysis of errors upon the achievable cancellation requires only a standard engineering mathematics background.