A 33 GHz Conformal Phased-Array Radar with Linearly Constrained Minimum Variance Digital Beamforming, Circular-Polarization Filtering, and Neural-Network Micro-Doppler Classification for Counter-UAS Applications

Abstract A compact millimeter-wave radar system operating at 33 GHz is presented for integration on small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and for ground-based counter-UAS reconnaissance. The system is based on a 36-element hemispherical conformal phased array of crossed half-wave dipole radiators that generates right-hand circular polarization (RHCP) on transmit and selectively receives left-hand circular polarization (LHCP) echoes from targets, providing passive first-stage suppression of co-polarized rain and ground clutter. A Linearly Constrained Minimum Variance (LCMV) digital beamformer, applied to per-element analog-to-digital converter (ADC) outputs, delivers closed-form beam weights that enforce a distortionless response at each scan direction while globally minimizing sidelobe power. The formulation resolves the main-beam drift caused by the ill-conditioned re-scaling step in iterative Chebyshev tapering, achieving sidelobe levels below −20 dB with main-beam peaks within 0.1◦ of their commanded angles across all evaluated positions. Mutual coupling between array elements is modeled analytically using the induced-EMF method, yielding a 36 × 36 impedance matrix whose off-diagonal entries are at most 8.2% of the element self-impedance at the minimum inter-element separation of 2.70 λ. A closed-form decoupling matrix is applied to the receive manifold prior to LCMV weight computation, and the resulting coupling-corrected and uncoupled beam patterns are compared quantitatively. Seven simultaneous independent receive beams covering 0◦–60◦ elevation are formed from a single data snapshot. A Scaled Conjugate Gradient neural network classifier, trained on radar-equation-scaled micro-Doppler features following Swerling I–IV radar cross-section (RCS) fluctuation statistics, achieves overall classification accuracy above 85% across five target classes. The design methodology provides a complete end-to-end simulation framework spanning element modeling, beamformer synthesis, coherent link-budget analysis, and AI-based classification relevant to drone detect-and-avoid (DAA) and counter-UAS (C-UAS) applications.