Field Trial of a Coherent Widely Distributed Dual-Band Photonics-Based Radar Network in a Real Maritime Environment

A photonics-based widely-distributed multi-input multi-output radar network exploiting coherent and dual-band signals is presented for the first time. The surveillance system is deployed in an operating port, exploiting the available fiber network, for the observation of real maritime traffic. The preliminary results show the benefit of geometric and frequency diversity on the target detection. The fundamental importance of centralized processing and data coherence in such system is discussed.