Quantum illumination radars: Target detection

Abstract The authors consider a quantum radar which operates on the quantum illumination principle. The authors’ attention is focused on its function of target detection in a noisy environment. The role of the optical parametric amplifier (OPA) in detection is first examined by the authors, and a dual‐OPA design for more flexible combination of optimised gains is proposed, resulting in a detector substantially improved in its performance from the normally used 1‐OPA design. Then, the use of the entanglement information in the covariance matrix (CM) between the returned signal and idler beams for detection is considered, and a technique to extract such information is proposed. By employing some statistical relationships between positive definite matrices, the authors come up with a new target detection method. Numerical experiments confirm the superior detection performance of the CM detectors compared to that of the OPA detectors.