Course Information

Dates: 26 to 29 July 2016

Course code: EEE5112Z

Venue: Menzies Seminar Room, 6th Floor, Menzies Building (Upper Campus), University of Cape Town

Course Description

A practical course, which requires a sound knowledge of Radar Systems and Signal Processing, and teaches you how to use that knowledge to synthesise the design of a system to a requirement, but, also to be able to model alternative designs, and assess the suitability of such designs. This skill is essential when involved with the design of a sensor, or evaluating the usefulness of a sensor for specific applications.

The approach taken is in two parts: firstly, we analyse an existing system, to predict and compare performance against advertised radar performance. This is followed by the design of improvements to the system, based on practicals and project work by the student. The system considered is just one example of the broad field of radar, i.e. Air Traffic Control radar, but the systems thinking is widely applicable.

(Please note that the most recent course handout will be available via Vula.)

 

 

Download
Course
Handout:
Radar Systems
Modelling 2016

Course Overview

The following topics will be covered:

  • What is air traffic control?
  • The ATCR family
  • Blake’s analysis
  • Clutter
  • Targets
  • The ATCR processing chain
  • Moving target indicator
  • Antennas
  • Reliability
  • Basics of Pulse Doppler
  • Pulse Doppler processing
  • Radar front end constraints
  • Modelling the detection process
  • AREPS for propagation modelling
  • CARPET
  • Bistatic Radar
  • NetRAD and its database

Presenters

Prof Michael Inggs is an Emeritus Professor (since 2016) in the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Cape Town, South Africa, being the founder in 2011 of the taught masters programme in Radar. During 2015 he handed over the Convenorship of the Radar Masters, being on sabbatical leave before retirement at the end of 2016.

Michael Inggs was born and educated in the Eastern Cape, South Africa (Uitenhage and Grahamstown). He has an Honours degree in Physics and Applied Mathematics from Rhodes University (1973) and a PhD and DIC from Imperial College, London (1979). He is a Life Senior Member of the IEEE.

Prior to joining UCT, he held posts at Decca Radar Research Laboratories (UK), Raytheon Data Systems Company (USA), ESD Ltd (RSA) and the SA Naval Dockyard, Simon’s Town, South Africa. He joined the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Cape Town in 1988, as an Associate Professor and was promoted to full Professor in 2000. He has holds a Visiting Professorship at University College London, and has been a visiting Professor at TU Delft, Netherlands during 2015.

His research interests include radar, earth observation using radar, and high performance computing architectures and languages for signal and image processing. He has more than 200 journal and conference publications, four patents, and has supervised more than 100 M.Sc. and 20 Ph.D. to completion.

He was a member of the Administration Committee of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society 2011-2013, 2013 to 2016, as Director of Education. He was a member of the IEEE AESS Radar Panel until his retirement at the end of 2016, but remains as part of the Education Committee of this panel, assisting with Radar Summer Schools.

He currently is appointed at the Space Advisory Company as Principal Radar Systems Engineer.

 

Dr Yunus Abdul Gaffar is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Cape Town, and a member of the Radar Remote Sensing Group. His interest is in the general field of radar signal processing and more specifically in radar imaging, detection, tracking and clutter analysis.