Millimeterwave radar sensors are netted to cover a sufficient region of an airport and deliver as well information on position as classification of debris. To be able to miniaturize the antenna assembly, which is critical for the vicinity of a runway, the 220-GHz radar band is used. Use of this band also allows to achieve a wide signal bandwidth and consequently a high range resolution

For foreign object detection on runways, highly sensitive radar sensors give the opportunity to detect even very small objects, metallic and non-metallic, also under adverse weather conditions. As it is desirable for airport applications to install only small but robust installations along the traffic areas, millimeter-wave radars offer the advantage of small antenna apertures and miniaturized system hardware. A 220-GHz radar was developed, which is capable to serve this application, if several of these are netted to cover the whole traffic area. Although under fortunate conditions the radar allows a classification or even an identification of the debris, the complete system design incorporates 3-D time-of-flight cameras for assistance in the identification process, which are also distributed along the traffic areas. The system approach further relies upon a change detection algorithm on the netted information to discriminate non-stationary alarms and reduce the false a larm ratio