Frequently Asked Questions
What is radar?
Radar is a sensor that transmits pulses of electromagnetic waves and receives reflections of objects and targets. The returning wave patterns indicate the distance, direction, and speed of objects on the ground and/or in the air.
High-performance radar sensors, used for a half-century by the military, are often large and heavy, consume a lot of power, and are incredibly costly. Referred to collectively as C-SWaP (cost, size, weight, and power), these factors have made radar impractical for commercial applications, and have even prevented use on many military platforms where C-SWaP is a constraint. While in the last two decades there have emerged very low-cost radar sensors for automobiles, these have been limited to very short-range (several hundred meters).
Outside the automotive sector, modern radar designers have made significant efforts towards reducing C-SWaP in attempts to unblock commercial markets in security, autonomy, collision avoidance, and situational awareness, but unfortunately those efforts have often come with significant compromises on performance. Echodyne’s portfolio of ultra-low C-SWaP radars is recognized as a “cost-per-performance” breakthrough, bringing the fidelity and accuracy of high-end military radar systems to a C-SWaP that meets both commercial and government needs.
Are there different types of radar?
Yes, radars are operationally unique. Different sizes, transmit powers, system architectures, frequencies, signal processing, and modes of operation are all design-tailored to specific requirements and constraints of the application. However, within that maze of designs, there are a few primary categories.
The first category has to do with how the electromagnetic waves are generated and transmitted: they can be confined to short pulses or transmitted continuously, logically named Pulsed or Continuous Wave – CW radar systems. Pulsed radar systems have a long & trusted pedigree in defense applications and many modern systems employ CW (especially Frequency Modulated CW – FMCW).
Another key radar category has to do with the antenna that transmits and receives the electromagnetic waves, and what type of antenna it is. There are mechanical antennas (like a satellite dish) that need to be physically pointed, there are stationary omni-directional antennas that don’t provide much directional information. And there are electronically steered antennas (ESA’s – sometimes called Phased Arrays) that control the electromagnetic waves signal on transmit and receive and direct them into highly directional “beams” which improves detection range and sensitivity.
ESA’s have been the gold standard when high-performance is critical (such as in DoD applications) since WWII, and Echodyne radars are ESAs. However, by using a proprietary technology called metamaterials Echodyne can deliver ESA performance for orders of magnitude lower C-SWaP than has ever been possible.
What is MESA radar?
MESA stands for metamaterials electronically scanned array. Metamaterials is proprietary Echodyne technology and the secret sauce for packaging all the power of conventional ESAs into an ultra-low SWaP form factor.
What are metamaterials?
Metamaterials is not actually material science. Rather, it is a physics-based approach to design. The metamaterials approach fundamentally asks “what material response do I need to achieve the desired behavior?” and then subsequently “what are the different ways can I achieve that material response?” Often, this thinking can reveal a new and simpler solutions, and Echodyne has shown this is true in the case of ESA radars.
In 2014, under the leadership of Eben Frankenberg and Tom Driscoll and alongside a core team who helped incubate the technology, Echodyne launched with a vision of bringing a new generation of high-performance radar to what they saw as unmet sensor needs in the growing fields surrounding autonomy. Providing radar to autonomous vehicles on ground, air, and sea is part of that vision; and so is bringing much needed security to a world that is increasingly being disrupted by autonomous platforms such as drones.
How do I know if I need radar?
Radar provides detection of threats on the ground and in the air. Since drones are increasingly leveraged for unlawful and harmful means, radar is a valuable tool for agencies protecting people and places. Radar will detect anything that is moving, regardless of weather or lighting conditions, and radar provides exacting data that drives additional security decision making and technology deployment. For example, accurate radar data will spot an incoming drone before the best trained spotter can, then that data is used to slew a PTZcamera to put “eyes-on” the object, providing an opportunity to confirm whether the target is a threat. For companies and agencies guarding against threats that will cause harm to people or way of life, radar is the foundational sensor for C-UAS, drone detection, and enhanced perimeter security.