Our sixth course of 2016, High Resolution and Imaging Radar (2016), ran from 06 to 10 June 2016 at the University of Cape Town, where it was presented by two well-known visiting professors from the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Pisa in Italy: Prof Marco Martorella and Prof Fabrizio Berizzi.

The five-day course covered three topic areas, viz. high resolution radar, synthetic aperture radar and inverse synthetic aperture. Practical sessions, including the use of MATLAB, were interwoven with classic lectures, in order to give students an opportunity to strengthen their understanding of the theory. Practical work was based on running routines that implemented high resolution and imaging radar algorithms, requiring students to learn how to set system parameters to achieve desired performances.

Prof Marco Martorella lectures on “Fundamentals of Radar” and “Digital Communications” at the University of Pisa; his research interests are mainly in the field of radar imaging, including passive, multichannel, multistatic and polarimetric radar imaging.

Prof Fabrizio Berizzi teaches “Radar Techniques” and  “Signal Theory” at the University of Pisa, and “Digital Signal Processing” at the Italian Naval Academy. His main research interests are in the fields of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR and ISAR) and fractal radar detection and modeling.

Our next course – Radar Systems Modelling (2016) – will be the final course of 2016. It is scheduled to take place at UCT during the week of 26 to 29 July. It will be presented by Prof Michael Inggs of UCT, in conjunction with Dr Jaco de Witt and Kumaran Naicker of the CSIR.