Student Team Helps Break Ground on
Chaotic Signals’ Effect on Radar
EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (7/19/06) — A student team, one of the few research teams in the world investigating the emerging concept of applying chaotic signals to radar systems, has presented and demonstrated its results.
The students are participating in an Engineering Clinic at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California, sponsored through The Aerospace Institute’s Corporate University Affiliates Program, or CUAP. The program provides students the opportunity to work on and suggest improvements to technical projects. Clinic members have also been recruited to work at The Aerospace Corporation.
The team was tasked to develop a chaotic radar unit and demonstrate basic radar functionality through the application of a low-frequency wideband random-like signal.
The proof-of-concept radar system is based on the Young-Silva Chaotic Oscillator. The oscillator was originally designed to be a building block in the development of secure communication links that use a chaotic signal as the carrier.
The oscillator was developed by Albert Young and Dr. Christopher Silva, both of The Aerospace Corporation's Communications Electronics Department. “This team is one of only a few research teams around the world investigating the emerging concept of applying chaotic signals to radar systems,” Silva said.
The team gave a final presentation in May at The Aerospace Corporation where they presented their radar system design and many experimental results. The team was also able to give several real-time single-target and multiple-target demonstrations of their system. Their efforts will form a basis for assessing the possible use of chaotic signals for secure radar systems.
The chaotic signal’s random noise-like nature makes it hard for an adversary to detect that the radar is targeting them.
The team has completed its final report, and will present its results at the Workshop in the Transmission of Chaotic Signals in August at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.
The team is made up of senior and junior engineering majors, a faculty advisor, and project sponsor liaisons, in this case Young and Dr. Samuel Osofsky, associate director in the corporation's Communications Electronics Department.
“Aerospace gets access to bright young engineering prospects whose out-of-the-box thinking often produces solutions that more experienced engineers would dismiss,” Osofsky said.
The chaotic radar unit is among several engineering clinic projects sponsored by CUAP.
The Aerospace Corporation, based in El Segundo, Calif., is an independent, nonprofit company that provides objective technical analyses and assessments for national security space programs and selected civil and commercial space programs in the national interest.
Media Inquiries: Contact Dave Jonta, 310-336-5041, david.l.jonta@aero.org
