ISAR imagery for surveillance in space

There is a need to provide radar imaging system, installed on satellites, which can deliver high resolution imagery from a dedicated field of view to monitor space-borne assets and debris. The PhD programme will include wide scope of research objectives on development of high-resolution mm-wave/sub-THz Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) to provide imagery of space objects, including satellites and debris. Radar architecture, power budgets, ISAR parameters as well as format and optimal processing of spatio-temporal data to be used with achievable ISAR imagery will be assessed against orbital deployment parameters, materials, shapes, formation and features of space objects. Enhanced performance of ISAR technique will be achieved by (I) devising optimal orbital deployment parameters, (ii) design of radar waveforms and beamforming for maximization of the information context; (iii) developing and tuning algorithms to maximize image quality. For classification the indicative metrics will be investigated using deterministic and statistical scene assessments, to create a labelled dataset of high-frequency ISAR radar images of objects, such as satellites, clusters or individual pieces of debris and to train classifiers in end-to-end segmentation process.

The PhD study will conduct theoretical and experimental research on radar system development and signal processing. Naturally, this area falls under the ICT and Engineering themes of EPSRC, and in particular the Sensors and Instrumentation, RF & Microwave Devices, and DSP research areas. The anomaly detection algorithms of the project are directly related to the EPSRC portfolio on Artificial Intelligence Technologies, particularly on research for "learning and adaptation" as well as "sensory understanding and interaction".