Abstract: For years the federal government has been heavily dependant on radar for surveillance of both weather and aircraft. As a result, radar technology design, manufacture and application development has matured rapidly. As the demand for improved public weather safety increases and the air transportation system continues to experience extensive growth, there will be even more demand placed on the legacy radar resources. To meet these demands, there is a need to conduct research and development to pursue new and advanced surveillance technologies.

Federal agencies have begun to explore state-of-the-art phased array radar technology as a potential solution to both their common and unique mission needs. The multi-function Phased Array Radar (MPAR) Program is a tri-agency partnership among the Departments of Transportation (Federal Aviation Administration), Commerce (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and Defense. Exploiting the extensive work and success of the Department of Defense (DOD) with the implementation of Phased Array Radar (PAR) for missile defense, civilian agencies are exploring the application of an advanced MPAR network to perform the weather, aircraft surveillance and homeland security defense functions.

The MPAR program envisions using affordable active solid state transmit/receive modules in a non-rotating electronically scanned array to detect weather and targets (cooperative and non-cooperative as required) simultaneously and with greater speed and accuracy than today's systems.