GRIFO Radar: Advances and developments in high-resolution modes for an expert avionic radar for fighters

Abstract:  Abstract In the 90s, Galileo Avionica (GA Radar Systems Business Unit) has developed the GRIFO Radar, a multimode-multirole pulse Doppler radar, devoted to occupy an important role in the family of the radar for weapon release. In the last 15 years more than 400 units have been sold to five Air Forces, for more than 100,000 hours of operative flights. The need for the implementation of high-resolution modes, with seaborne targets identification for the Italian Navy, pushed to the extension of the Grifo Radar to high-resolution applications. This paper describes the results obtained with a modified version of this device, indicated as Experimental HR-Grifo, with high-resolution capabilities. Based on the low-resolution modes of the Grifo, this radar allowed to search and track the targets, and to acquire the pertinent high-resolution signals, making use of the Deramp On Receive technique. In the experimental version the signals were recorded and processed offline during the flight and in the lab, to tune the algorithms and to experience the problems related to the sub-metric resolutions. A number of flights, onboard the GA Aircraft, and ground sessions have been performed with air, ground and sea cooperative military moving targets. The experience in the hardware design and the amount of high-resolution data recorded has allowed the finalization of high-resolution modes (SAR and ISAR) in the last versions of the Grifo Radar which is going to flight test these applications in real time on November 2007.