Biography: François Le Chevalier is Emeritus Professor “Radar Systems Engineering” at Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands), and retired Chief Scientist of Thales Air & Land Systems. 

Mr. Le Chevalier began his career at the Office National d’Etudes et de Recherches Aérospatiales (Onera), where he initiated research on radar target and background signatures processing. In 1986, Mr. Le Chevalier joined Thomson-CSF (now Thales), where he pioneered French developments in adaptive digital beamforming and STAP radar systems demonstrations, and shared apertures and multisensor concepts design and validation. In 1998, he joined the Thales Airborne Systems group, as Scientific Director, in charge of advanced research and developments coordination (airborne radars, electronic warfare, airborne mission systems). His current research activities include space-time coding for active antenna systems, and wideband unambiguous radar systems.

He has been active in- or chairing- the Technical Program Committees of most IEEE International Radar Conferences since Brest, 1999, has recently been the Honorary Chair of SEE/IEEE International Radar Conference 2014 in Lille, France, and will be the Honorary Chair of SEE/IEEE International Radar Conference 2019 in Toulon, France. 

An author of many papers, tutorials, and patents in radar and electronic warfare, Prof. Le Chevalier, an Emerite member of the Société des Electriciens et des Electroniciens (SEE), is the author of a book on “Radar and Sonar Signal Processing Principles” published by Artech House in 2002, editor of  “Non-Standard Antennas”, published by Wiley in 2010, and co-author of “Principles of Modern Radar: Advanced Techniques”, Scitech, IET Publishing, 2013, and of “Advanced Ultrawideband Radar: Signals, Targets, and Applications”, CRC Press, 2016.

Title: Wideband moving targets surveillance

Abstract: When designing a new radar system, standard resolution trade-offs play a major role, providing the basic parameters of the radar, such as size, update rate, and range. Moreover, diversity has long been used for mitigating fading effects due to the fluctuation of targets and clutter.

However, with the arrival of more flexible systems, using multiple parallel channels on transmit and receive, and wider instantaneous bandwidths, these standard trade-offs are becoming less simple – and more flexible. For example, resolution in velocity becomes dependent on the bandwidth, or diversity gains depend on range resolution. This is especially true for wideband radar waveforms, and can lead to significant benefits for detection of moving targets in adverse clutter.

Obviously, limitations still exist – although they are not always clearly evidenced in modern publications. In this tutorial, we will analyze the relations between range, Doppler, and angle, for detection, location and analysis of moving targets in clutter. The idea is to contribute to a better understanding of the real benefits of agile transmissions for detection of moving targets, focusing on the velocity and angular measurement improvements, and on the benefits in terms of power budget.

Special attention will be given to the quality of the different wideband sensor modes for long range surveillance, evaluated through their ambiguity functions, and new results on detection of moving targets in clutter will be provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of these new architectures for small targets detection at long range, in difficult environments.

Who should attend:

This course is intended for researchers, radar designers, and program managers interested in obtaining additional insight into future wideband radar systems capabilities. 

Throughout the lecture, intuitive reasoning and simple examples will be preferred to analytical demonstrations to provide the audience with an insider understanding of the basic properties and trade-offs.