| Prof. Alfonso Farina |
 Biography: Alfonso Farina FREng, FIET, FIEEE, Fellow of EURASIP received the laurea degree in EE, University of Rome (I), 1973. In 1974 he joined Selenia, now Selex ES, where he was Director of the Analysis of Integrated Systems Unit and subsequently of Engineering of Large Business Systems Division. In 2012, he was the Chief Technology Officer of the Company reporting directly to the President. In 2013-2014 he has been Senior Advisor to CTO. He retired in October 2014. From 1979 to 1985 he was also Professor of Radar Techniques at the University of Naples (I). He has provided innovative technical solutions to detection, signal-data-image processing, tracking and fusion for the main radar systems conceived, designed, and developed in the Company. He has provided leadership in many projects, at international level also, in surveillance for ground and naval applications, in airborne early warning and in imaging radar. He is author of more than 600 peer-reviewed technical publications and of books and monographs (published worldwide), some of them also translated in Russian and Chinese. He received many awards, some of which are: leader of the team that won the 2004 First Prize Award for Innovation Technology of Finmeccanica; International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, U.K. (2005): the Fellowship was presented to him by HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh; IEEE Dennis J. Picard Medal for Radar Technologies and Applications (2010): “For continuous, innovative, theoretical and practical contributions to radar systems and adaptive signal processing techniques”. In 2014 he has been chosen as a recipient of a 2014 IET Achievement Medal “for outstanding contributions to radar system design, signal, data and image processing and data fusion”.Title: Cognitive Radar Signal Processing Abstract: Cognitive radar provides new sensing possibilities for rapidly changing scenes, offering substantial increases in agility particularly at the transmitter, where opportunities to exploit real-time control over a multitude of degrees of freedom are continuously evolving. The objective of this talk is to present the state of the art of cognitive radar signal processing. Specifically, the cognitive radar architecture will be presented and suitably connected with transmit adaptivity encountered in echolocating mammals. Then, a discussion follows on suitable radar waveform design and/or selection algorithms which, exploiting the available environmental cognition (reflectivity characteristic of the environment, weather conditions, location of electromagnetic interferences as well as their bandwidth), adapt the transmitter and receiver pair to the actual operating scenario. The importance of cognition in transmitter/receiver adaptivity is justified as a mean to optimize some relevant radar performance measures, such as range-Doppler resolution, detection capabilities, and clutter rejection, while accounting for coexistence of the radar with spectrally overlaid systems and signal-dependent interference. Cognitive Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) strategies will be finally considered showing their potentials on real radar data also in comparison with standard CFAR processing techniques. |
