Intelligent Aerospace Radar Team (IART) is a group of researchers from School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC). The team has focused on Small, Intelligent Radar Technologies (SIRT) and education. IART is currently led by Professor Yan (Rockee) Zhang, who has been working on innovative radar technology development for more than 13 years. Dr Zhang has been the lead of OU’s aerospace and airborne radar research program, key user of the Radar Innovations Lab (RIL) facility, and technical coordinator of OU’s unmanned aerial system (UAS) radar center planning.

The IART is a team connecting the innovative RF and microwave sensing concepts with the practical prototype implementations. The new concepts of radar sensing have come from many sources, such as new communication theories, inspiration from biological sensors or human cognitive process, and very different system architecture ideas. IART’s main work is to bring these new ideas to the real-world, incorporate them into existing products, and apply them to the critical missions: avionics, ISR, science endeavors, and so on.

IART is also excellent on solving specific challenges in specific radar misisons. For example, develop a special radar transceiver with very low phase-noise level for a new radar system product, make a very powerful FPGA-based processor running adaptive beamforming algorithm in hardware, enhance the dynamic range of a solid-state transmitter, or test a dual-frequency antenna design for special purpose radar on UAV. IART works closely with system leaders and engineers to provide the best solutions.

The projects performed in IART include NASA-EPSCoR project or spaceborne radar transceiver optimizations, Air-Force all-weather sense and avoid (SAA) radar for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), ADS-B/UAT transponder based radar sensing, TR module for Multi-functional Phased Array (MPAR) and aviation hazard monitoring radars.