dr. Blanco-del-Campo

Alvaro Blanco was born in Leon, Spain, on 12th October 1979. He moved to Madrid to start his university studies at the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) in 1997. He received his diploma in electrical engineering, with honored ranks, in 2002 and, even before ending his graduate, he joined the Microwave and Radar Research Group at Electrical Engineering School of that University working in developing new non-invasive methods for thermal characterization of microwave high power amplifiers . Just after ending his degree, he obtained a grant from  the Spanish Science and Technology Ministry for becoming a Ph. D. developing his area of expertise in High Resolution Radars.

His thesis, entitled ?High Resolution Radars using CWLFM signals? was ranked in 2008  with ?magna cum  laude? and  his work was mainly driven to design, manufacture and test a High Range  Resolution radar, transmitting a CWLFM signal at low millimeter wave band . The operational features of the prototype developed, allowed to obtain ISAR images of several and different targets with a great range resolution, pointing out its suitability for coastal surveillance and traffic control purposes.

For the first goal he collected a great amount of real sea clutter data, allowing the development of  a sea clutter modeling and also the improve and development of  new detection techniques for such a difficult environment for radars as the sea is. For the second purpose, he has also stored echoes from vehicles travelling along highways trying to explode the new characteristics available thanks to the high resolution features of the radar, for example, extending Doppler ambiguity.

After obtaining his Ph.D. he moved to the other Electrical Engineering School of the UPM, also in Madrid, where he first got a Laboratory Manager position and after that an adjunct professor position. At this group his worked was focused in developing, using millimeter band, the design of Monolithic Microwave Circuitry (MMICs) and antennas, also with characterization of the stability concept for oscillators design.

Since 1^st July of 2014 he is a Post-Doctoral researcher within the Microwave Sensing, Signals and Systems (MS3) group at the Delft University of Technology, where his work is focused in the development of better traffic control radars, exploiting  wideband transmissions, and also the analysis of suitability of Primary Surveillance Radars for weather purposes like wind-fields and rain-fall estimation. . He also serves as a reviewer for IEEE and IET journals.       

Projects currently involved in :

• WMTI: Wideband Algorithms for Migrating Targets Indication.
• FP7-UFO: Ultra-Fast wind sensOrs for wake-vortex hazards mitigation.

Research

During recent years radar development has been focused in spreading its usefulness to a lot of different applications. Its use for presence detectors, automatic cruise control, detection of buried objects, analysis of structural weaknesses in civil buildings, weather forecasting, path tracking of people in a closed environments...are some examples showing that ?radar concept? can be easily exported  simply adjusting frequency and signal waveform to be transmitted.

All these new features are now possible because of the new technologies available, from circuitry and electronics till acquisition and processing systems. But also because of the efforts of the designers in adapting the radar systems to other environments, applications and uses. Using wider bandwidths, transmitting different frequencies, exploiting the array potentials and taking advantage of polarimetry have extended enormously the usefulness of radars.

But also, these new features can be exploited for ?old? radar applications, like traffic control and weather forecast, which can be fulfilled with higher precision and also much more information to be used by the end user.  

Publication list:

1. Blanco-del-Campo, A. ; Asensio-López, A. ; Gismero-Menoyo, J. ; Dorta-Naranjo, B.P. ; Carretero-Moya, J. ?Instrumental CWLFM High-Range Resolution Radar in Millimeter Waveband for ISAR Imaging.?. IEEE Sensors Journal. Volume: 11 , Issue: 2. Publication Year: 2011 , Page(s): 418 ? 429. Cited by:  Papers (2)
2. Munoz-Ferreras, J.M. ; Calvo-Gallego, J. ; Perez-Martinez, F. ; Blanco-del-Campo, A. ; Asensio-Lopez, A. ; Dorta-Naranjo, B.P. ?Motion compensation for ISAR based on the shift-and-convolution algorithm.?.  2006 IEEE Conference on Radar. Publication Year: 2006. Cited by:  Papers (2)
3. Carretero-Moya, J. ; Gismero-Menoyo, J. ; Blanco-del-Campo, A. ; Asensio-López, A. ?Statistical Analysis of a High-Resolution Sea-Clutter Database.?. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Volume: 48 , Issue: 4 , Part: 2. Publication Year: 2010 , Page(s): 2024 ? 2037. Cited by:  Papers (10)
4. Carretero-Moya, J. ; Gismero-Menoyo, J. ; Asensio-López, A. ; Blanco-del-Campo, A. ?Scan rate selection for coherent high-resolution maritime surveillance radar: An experimental study.?. 2010 IEEE Radar Conference, Publication Year: 2010 , Page(s): 428 ? 431.
5. del Campo, A.B. ; Lopez, A.A. ; Dorta Naranjo, B.P. ; Menoyo, J.G. ; Moran, D.R. ; Duarte, C.C . ?CWLFM millimeter-wave radar for ISAR imaging with range coverage.?. 2005 IEEE International Radar Conference, Publication Year: 2005 , Page(s): 933 ? 938. Cited by:  Papers (2)
6. Duarte, C.C. ; Naranjo, B.P.D. ; Lopez, A.A. ; del Campo, A.B. ?High resolution CWLFM radar for vessel detection and  identification?

Last updated: 5 Sep 2016