Design and Realization of an Airborne Sense & Avoid Radar Demonstrator

In manned aviation pilots have to "See and Avoid" other aircraft in order to avoid conflicts. "Sense and Avoid" (S&A) systems shall enable the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in non-segregated airspace by providing a "See and Avoid" capability. At least for larger aircraft, a Radar sensor is the key element of such a Sense and Avoid system. The challenge when developing an S&A radar is minimizing size, weight and power consumption while maintaining the desired performance. The Radar system has to search a large angular field of view for relatively small targets at a typical range of up to 20 km. It shall deliver tracks with a high angular measurement accuracy and a high update rate. In this paper the design and realization of an S&A Radar demonstrator is described and comprehensive test results are presented, that have been gathered within a sophisticated system test environment.