Customer Reviews

Microwave Radar: Imaging and Advanced Processing (Artech House Radar Library)

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This is a comprehensive look at imaging radar, by a professional who has developed and deployed SAR systems. Good source book with state of the art references on such subjects as ISAR and STAP (clutter reduction) processing. Much of the last third of the book on specialized topics is derived from government-funded radar (SAR, GMTI, and SAIP target recognition ) research, such as the Global Hawk UAV SAR. Thus, as a sourcebook for working engineers in the defense reconnaissance community it is more practical than a standard academic textbook.

This book is extremely well written and very useful. It introduces radar concepts and explains them in enough detail to understand the underlying physics. Mathematical derivations are accompanied by good illustrations and excellent verbal descriptions and are easy for anyone with a technical background to understand. The material is logically presented and can be used to do radar design work, trade studies, simulations, or estimates of performance. It is a very good reference book for someone who already understands radar, as well as an excellent textbook for someone just learning about modern radars.

Microwave Radar by Roger Sullivan is a very comprehensive text that covers a breadth of topics from the basic through current research trends. The coverage of many important radar topics separates this book from all others, including the classic Introduction to Radar Systems by Skolnik. These topics include imaging radar; target recognition; medium / high PRF pulse Doppler radar (including multiple PRF waveforms and the use of the Chinese Remainder Theorem); space-time adaptive processing; and bistatic radar. I would recommend this text for the new radar student as well as the practicing engineer.

The subject book is a "must have" for the practicing radar engineer. It provides an excellent summary of virtually all major topics in radar signal processing: basic techniques, bearing estimation, ISAR, theory of SAR processing, super-resolution, target recognition, pulse-Doppler/MTI and STAP! Topics are covered in a clear, in-depth manner. Dr. Sullivan's expertise shines in the middle chapters of the book covering imaging radar; I enjoyed the extensive treatment of current topics, especially the discussion on SAR super-resolution and target ID. Additionally, Dr. Sullivan's ability to relate "book topics" to real-world sensor applications is a big plus.

Well written, clearly annotated, thorough, and full of detailed data on radars; there is a lot to recommend this book to the practicing engineer.

Sullivan's book covers an extremely broad swath of the world of microwave radar and makes an excellent desktop source. With the possible exception of the venerable but considerably larger (and heavier!) "Radar Handbook", no single volume covers the diverse topics this book does.

The first five chapters (along with chapter ten on pulse Doppler radar) form a ready-made semester-long text (with problems) on ground-based radar, proceeding from first principles and a brief historical note through subsystems, propagation effects, signal processing, and tracking radar. From there the book goes on to the more specialized topics of SAR/ISAR, automatic target recognition (ATR), airborne operation, STAP, and bi-static operation.

The illustrations and graphics are superior and set Sullivan's book apart: clear, easy to read, and clearly annotated (including citing the reference, when appropriate).

A feature I have found useful are the numerous tables showing "real-world" SAR operational and hardware parameters. These tables are quite detailed and thorough and set the book apart from other books in the field.

Another example of the book's thoroughness is the author's decision to include topics such as the effects of target translation and rotation on SAR imagery and to detail some of the work in the field in dealing with the phenomenon. As mentioned in the book, this represents some of the very latest research in the field on SAR/ISAR work.

Having worked with the author over the years, it is no surprise to see the book endorsed politially, and focused almost exclusively on the work of a few.

Most of this book is on introductory topics and, on this, Sullivan shows his excellent ability to present intuitively simple explanations. However, the book is entitled "imaging and advanced concepts" which, when treated, reveal major shortcomings in the author's knowledge and scope.

Arguably, the worst chapter is Chapter 9 on SAR/ISAR Target Recognition. Here, after a brief remark on CFAR (for the record, in this basic term, "R" means Rate, not Ratio), the Adaptive Matched Filter development is copied in summary form and then wholly dismissed as being "beyond realistic computation, even for individual images." This allows the author to then present the one thing he does have knowledge of: old-fashoined single-pixel "kitchen sink" discrimination that has, sadly, developed into a basis for SAIP. After much pontification on this (including a deceptive presentation of artifically derived results), the author devotes only half of a page to "Other Target-Recognition Algorithms." In this section a short paragraph mentions one algorithm from decades of landmark work by Rihacek (in a disbelieving tone), and a second short paragraph simply lists some topics in another book by Borden.

For myself, a devoted radar expert and researcher, the emphasis and depth of this book is both sad and dismaying. The work is far more political than valuable, and should be avoided. While some of the introductory topics are well written, this is overshadowed by slant, incompleteness and, in some cases, deception (whether willful or not) in more advanced areas.

In contrast to the title " advanced concepts ", this is an introductory book. Readers waste time if they read advanced concepts chapters. Only lists of refernces are useful.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to have a basic understanding of radar fundamentals as well as more advanced concepts. The book covers almost every aspect of modern radar and gives extensive references for in-depth study. An unique feature of the book is its thorough discussion on imaging radar and the related digital signal processing. Many of the homework problems given at the end of each chapter also help to enhance the understanding of various concepts develped throughout the book.