Keynote Speakers of the EuRAD Plenary Sessions Announced

Keynote Speakers of the EuRAD Plenary Sessions Announced

Our keynote speakers for the EuRAD opening and closing sessions are confirmed:

Tom Driscoll, Echodyne
“Phased Array Radar for an Era of Autonomy: Progress, Challenges and Outlook”
The rapid increase in capability and prevalence of autonomous systems is driving demand for new and better sensors. Radar has always held a prestigious position among sensor suites as one of the only all-weather long-range modalities. However, the missions and environments for autonomous systems are now demanding higher performance than most traditional radars architectures can provide. Phased array radars – including MIMO phased arrays – are capable of the high performance required, but historically have been out of reach for all but the most exclusive systems due to their cost and complexity. This talk will outline the growing opportunity for next-generation radar sensors across multiple markets. We will look at major trends and progress advancing phased array technology, as well as examine key challenges and inevitable design tradeoffs. We’ll end with an optimistic outlook for areas that seem poised for breakthrough and market success

Christoph Reising, Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (FHR)
“Improving Radar Based Space Situational Awareness: Recent technical Concepts for the TIRA and GESTRA Systems”
The daily life on earth increasingly relies on services provided by satellites in orbit like communication and navigation. With the rapidly growing number of artificial space objects, it is mandatory to detect, identify and track space objects with highly sensitive radar sensors. For this purpose, the Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR is working on two complimentary radar systems: the Tracking and Imaging Radar (TIRA) and the German Experimental Space Surveillance and Tracking Radar (GESTRA). TIRA is fully operated by FHR and is currently the most powerful radar sensor in Europe. The system is in ongoing development to increase its tracking and space reconnaissance capabilities over the next years. The GESTRA system is a phased array system that can cover huge areas of space simultaneously. Development and construction of GESTRA are commissioned by the German Space Agency at DLR. It is going to be fully operational during 2023. In order to establish a multistatic radar network, construction and further development of additional transmit and receive units are already underway. The new capabilities of TIRA and the GESTRA network will provide a significant contribution to global space situational awareness activities in the future.

Matthias Gareis and Andreas Schiessl, Rohde & Schwarz
“Secure – Fast – Convenient: UWB-based Real-time Walkthrough Passenger Screening”
Terrorist attacks on civil aviation starting early 2001 created an increased demand in security for people screening. The desire to detect non-metallic items like ceramic knifes or explosives drove the roll-out of millimeter-wave imaging based security scanners. As part of the introduction of the second generation body scanners, the Rohde&Schwarz®QPS201 lifted passenger screening to the next level. The post-Covid recovery of air traffic paired with staff shortages created a strong need for higher efficiency, higher throughput and simplification of the screening process. Rohde & Schwarz’ response to this is the new QPS Walk2000 security scanner based on the ultra-wideband (UWB) technology operating in the frequency range from 3.6 GHz to 10.6 GHz, which allows screening even through thick layers of clothing while the passengers walk through it. UWB pulse generation in transmit and receive allows to produce a three-dimensional volume reconstruction in real-time. To reduce complexity and hardware cost, the receivers are using the sequential sampling radar technique. After the images of a person’s passage through the scanner are reconstructed, the posture of the person is extracted from the images and threat objects are detected at all body regions using artificial intelligence (AI). The automatic threat detection results are then displayed on a neutral avatar to ensure privacy.