Speaker: Prof. Zegang Ding

Affiliation: Beijing Institute of Technology

Report Title: Ground-based Distributed Planetary Radar: Overview, Technologies, and Challenges

Abstract: 

Ground-based planetary radar has played a vital role in deep space target sensing and communication, and has promoted significant development of planetary science. Traditional monostatic and large-aperture radar systems have made important contributions, but these systems have very high technical complexity and costs. Distributed aperture radar provides a promising alternative solution by coherently combining multiple spatially separated smaller antennas. This approach has higher scalability and deployment flexibility, potentially achieving higher sensitivity and improved resolution. In this talk, the historical development of ground-based planetary radar will be reviewed, and the advantages of ground-based distributed planetary radar will be discussed. Moreover, the latest research advancement in ground-based distributed planetary radar will be presented, and in particular China’s current efforts and achievements are highlighted.

Biography: 

Zegang Ding received a B.S. degree in Communication Engineering in 2003 and a Ph.D. degree in Signal and Information Processing in 2008, all from Beijing Institute of Technology. In September 2008, he joined Beijing Institute of Technology as a faculty. Currently, he is a Distinguished Professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology. He is the Deputy Director of Radar Technology Research Institute and the Director of a Key Laboratory of the Ministry of Education.

His research interests focus on synthetic aperture radar technologies. He is a Fellow of the Chinese Institute of Electronics. He serves as the Vice Chair of the Radio Astronomy Subsociety of the Chinese Institute of Electronics, and as editorial board members of Modern Radar, Acta Aeronautica et Astronautica Sinica, and Journal of Deep Space Exploration. He has been the General Chair of the IET International Radar Conference 2025, the Technical Program Committee Chair of the IET International Radar Conference 2018, and the Technical Program Committee Vice Chair of the International Conference on Signal, Information and Data Processing 2019. 

He has been the PI over 20 research projects and grants funded by National Key Research and Development Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, etc. He has published over 60 journal papers and one book, and has over 40 patents granted.