A ground-based radar at the Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll.

Advanced Sensor Systems and Test Beds

Sensors play a critical role in air and ballistic missile defense by detecting, tracking, and characterizing threats. Our staff design, develop, and prototype innovative advanced sensor systems and employment architectures for air defense systems and the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense System. We develop some of the world's most sophisticated radar and optical systems at the Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll and have taken a lead role in developing and modernizing the Department of Defense's long-range airborne surveillance platforms. In addition, we actively develop new techniques and system designs for high-frequency radar. Our group designs and fields test beds, and prototypes experimental systems that help to evaluate and demonstrate discrimination algorithms, sensor fusion, and signal processing concepts for improved performance of over-the-horizon radars and airborne air defense radars.

Featured Projects

A photograph of a suite of radars on an island.
communications
We contributed to a transformational program to fundamentally change the mission execution and operations at the Reagan Test Site.
A photograph of a large optical system, with the ocean in the background.
optical systems
Upgrades to the Reagan Test Site’s optical systems combine state-of-the-art focal plane technologies with a wide-area, network-centric, open-system design to allow distributed system command and control while achieving unprecedented metric accuracy.
A flow chart from a tracking antenna, to antenna site, to processing center, to operations center. to
communications
We conducted a software-defined radio technology development program to improve the way telemetered information is collected and processed.
A flow chart showing components of a radar open system architecture.
radar
We developed an open system architecture that reduces the complexity and cost of operations at the Reagan Test Site.
A dozen operators sit in front of computer screens.
decision support
New software tools provide test operators with automated decision support for directing sensors during increasingly complex tests conducted at the Reagan Test Site.

Advancing Our Research

Events

Jun
25 - 27
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, Massachusetts

Featured Publications

Antennas and RF components designed with graded index composite materials

Jul 27
2020 Intnl. Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Symp., ACES, 27-31 July 2020.

Wind turbine interference mitigation using a waveform diversity radar

Apr 27
IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., Vol. 53, No. 2, April 2017, pp. 805-15.

Comparisons between the extended Kalman filter and the state-dependent Riccati estimator

Sep 1
J. Guid. Control Dyn., Vol. 37, No. 5, September-October 2014, pp. 1556-67.