Using Radar for Automated Detect and Avoid Maneuvers against Non-Cooperative UAVs

The air-to-air detection, tracking and execution of a collision avoidance maneuver, especially against a small non-cooperative fast-moving target, is a challenging one indeed. Yet this is exactly the challenge Honeywell Aerospace has taken on to demonstrate this capability. At the core of this capability is a small, lightweight yet very capable airborne radar, the RDR-84K. The nomenclature, RDR-84K, embodies a radar of approximately 8" by 4" operating in the K frequency band. The RDR-84K is a full phased array radar capable of transmitting multiple beams to scan a large air space volume. The ability to field an agile radar system with a powerful processor is fundamental to the implementation of automated detect and avoid maneuvers. The Honeywell Detect and Avoid architecture takes advantage of a very capable core processing digital structure to not only support the fundamental radar operation but to also act as a host processor for the DAA algorithms (ACAS-sXu). Thus, providing the full DAA functionality in a single hardware entity, with no need for secondary co-processors and thereby meeting very stringent cost, size, weight, and power requirements for our UAS and AAM customers.