Retro Directive Ultra-Fast Acquisition Sensor (RUFAS)

The Ultra-Fast Radar effort will entail the design, construction, and demonstration of an X-band noise correlating radar with a retrodirective antenna. This effort will research and develop a new type of radar sensor based on the correlations of the Gaussian noise received by an antenna array from a small object located in the far field of the antennas and the retro-directive re-radiation of the correlated noise by interconnecting the receive elements to transmit elements in a conjugate ("van-Atta") fashion. The idea is the combining and tailoring of noisecorrelating interferometry and retro-directive antenna arrays into retro-directive noise-correlating (RNC) radar. The combination of these innovations allows the radar to operate in omni-directional search mode by broadcasting white noise over a specified search angle determined by the beam pattern of the individual elements. Once a target of adequate cross section enters the beam within the range of the sensor, correlations appear in the noise between neighboring antennas. The received noise power is then amplified by the transceiver electronic chain and retransmitted directly towards the target in a process call the RNC feedback loop.