Echolocating mammals such as bats, whales and dolphins are able to detect, select and attack prey even in dense cluttered and often hostile environments. They have developed echolocation for over 50 million years and rely on exceptional performance for their survival. Although the frequencies and waveform parameters used by radar sensors and by echolocating mammals are not the same, there remain close parallels that suggest lessons can be learnt from nature. In this chapter, we investigate the behaviour and performance of echolocating bats in terms of detecting, locating, tracking and capturing prey. We show how echolocation calls are diversified in a dynamic and intelligent manner according to the task performed and relate the results to typical flight trajectories. We discuss how echoes may be transformed into a meaningful perception of the target and finally we explore how this information can be used to develop a new architecture for radar automatic target recognition (ATR).

Inspec keywords: sensors; radar target recognition; bioacoustics; diversity reception

Other keywords: radar automatic target recognition; dolphins; echolocating bats; radar sensors; whales; echolocating mammals; prey location; frequencies parameters; ATR; biologically inspired waveform diversity; prey detection; waveform parameters

Subjects: Radar equipment, systems and applications