Simulation of Airborne Trajectories and Dynamic Two-Way Time Transfer for a Netted Radar System

In netted radar systems mounted on dynamic carrier platforms, a bi- and multistatic radar system requires transceivers to send or sample the signal of interest within a narrow time window. Deviations result in significant signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation, impairing the netted radar system performance. Due to the required measurement accuracy of time and position of the transceivers involved, and the large uncertainty in terms of measurement uncertainty during a field measurement, a trajectory simulator with a set of test trajectories has been developed. This work uses that tool to study the platform-relative geometry and baseline rate of change to enable a dynamic two-way time transfer. An estimation of the forward and reverse time propagation paths allows to measure and compensate the relative time offset between platforms to synchronize their clocks, accordingly. The simulator generates waypoints for arbitrary trajectories at desired sampling intervals. This allows the bi-directional dynamic two-way time transfer between platforms to be calculated in an ideal case. For realistic trajectories to be recreated, aircraft trajectories were recorded with an onboard inertial measurement unit (IMU). The probability density function of the measured acceleration across either axis of the IMU has been analyzed and equivalent noise has been generated for either stage of flight, and added to the noise-less generated waypoints. The obtained PDF for both experimental and generated trajectories have a large degree of correlation. The results suggest that the developed trajectory generation method allows studying the aforementioned relative movement between platforms.