Anticollision radar, especially for an aircraft when taxiing, and anticollision system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10585186-B2
Application number	US-201415034371-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 7, 2014
Priority date	Nov 26, 2013
Publication date	Mar 10, 2020
Grant date	Mar 10, 2020

Abstract

A radar attached laterally to airplane fuselage to detect obstacles on a collision course with a portion of the airplane facing the radar. The radar includes an emission antennal channel and reception antennal channels in the same plane. The radar Establishing in a radar coordinate system a first distance/Doppler map allowing echoes to be separated into distance and Doppler resolution cells in reception antennal channels; Establishing a second distance/Doppler map of smaller size by selecting a subset of distance/Doppler resolution cells corresponding to possible positions of targets liable to collide with the airplane; Establishing new distance/Doppler maps by forming beams computationally from the subsets of distance resolution cells; and Temporal integration, in each beam, of successive distance/Doppler maps.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. An anticollision radar for a taxiing aircraft, wherein the anticollision radar is attached laterally to a body of an aircraft to detect obstacles on a collision course with a portion of the aircraft, the anticollision radar being oriented along a sighting axis perpendicular to an axis of a fuselage of the aircraft;
the anticollision radar including at least one emission antenna channel emitting a wave of a FMCW (frequency modulation continuous-wave) type and a plurality of reception antenna channels placed in a same plane, a form of said wave and a field of angular coverage of said anticollision radar depending on a velocity of the aircraft;
said anticollision radar processing at least the following steps:
establishing in a coordinate system of the anticollision radar a first distance/Doppler map allowing echoes to be separated into distance and Doppler resolution cells in said plurality of reception antenna channels;
establishing a second distance/Doppler map of smaller size than the first distance/Doppler map by selecting from the first distance/Doppler map a subset of distance and Doppler resolution cells corresponding to positions of targets liable to collide with said portion of the aircraft, said selection depending on the velocity of the aircraft;
establishing new distance/Doppler maps by forming beams computationally from subsets of the distance/Doppler resolution cells that are retained for each reception antenna channel, so as to separate a beam of angular observation in a plane of the antenna channels into at least two beams utilizing Doppler filtering in unfocused synthetic antenna processing;
temporal integration, in each beam formed, of a plurality of successive distance/Doppler maps obtained in the establishing new distance/Doppler maps step in order to obtain an integrated distance/Doppler map for each beam, an integration duration depending on a waveform used; and
at least one step of detecting in each of the beams formed on a basis of said integrated distance/Doppler map.

2. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , wherein in the detecting step, an azimuth angle of a target is estimated, for each detected pixel in the integrated distance/Doppler map, by comparing a received level in the distance/Doppler maps of two adjacent formed beams using amplitude-comparison monopulse.

3. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the detecting step is followed by a step of tracking detected targets in the coordinate system of said anticollision radar.

4. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the anticollision radar changes coordinate systems, passing from the coordinate system associated with the anticollision radar to a coordinate system associated with said portion of the aircraft, in order to estimate coordinates of targets in the coordinate system associated with said portion, which positions said targets relative to said portion of the aircraft.

5. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , wherein a plane of the reception antenna channels is a horizontal plane.

6. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , wherein a beam forming by the antenna channels comprises an angular field of +/−45° in the plane of the antenna channels, relative to a sighting axis, that is perpendicular to an axis of the body of the aircraft.

7. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , wherein antennae of the reception antenna channels in which the beam forming is carried out computationally are spaced apart from one another by more than one half wavelength, and wherein an ambiguity to localize a target being removed by a Doppler frequency of a distance/Doppler cell of said target.

8. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the first distance/Doppler map is obtained after distance compressing and Doppler compressing said wave of the FMCW type.

9. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , comprising four reception antenna channels.

10. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said wave of the anticollision radar operates in a millimeter frequency domain.

11. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 10 , wherein said wave of the anticollision radar operates in a frequency band of 76 to 77 GHz.

12. The anticollision radar as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said portion is a wingtip of the aircraft.

13. An anticollision system for a taxiing airplane, comprising at least two radars as claimed in claim 1 , each installed laterally per side of the body of the airplane forming its fuselage.

14. The anticollision system as claimed in claim 13 , wherein each radar is installed in front of a wing.

15. The anticollision system as claimed in claim 14 , wherein each radar is attached in a location of a porthole in a vicinity of a cockpit.

Assignees

• Thales Sa

Inventors

• Cornic Pascal
• Le Bihan Patrick
• Audic Yves

Classifications

• G01S13/9047

  Doppler beam sharpening mode · CPC title

• G01S13/343 Primary

  using sawtooth modulation · CPC title

• G01S13/934

  on airport surfaces, e.g. while taxiing · CPC title

• G01S13/90

  using synthetic aperture techniques {, e.g. synthetic aperture radar [SAR] techniques} · CPC title

• G01S13/931 Primary

  of land vehicles · CPC title