Colorado State University researchers working for the federal agency that helped invent everything from GPS to the Internet have developed a new radar system aimed at helping soldiers track enemy movements in cities.

Radar is typically used to track airplanes and ships and has traditionally been most effective when there's very little else to clutter the background.

The new $1.6 million system being developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency works in cluttered environments.

The system depends on a network of radar emitters tied into a powerful computer system that analyzes the signals and turns them into something the average soldier can interpret.

"It's extremely challenging and difficult to do these things," CSU Professor Edwin Chong said.

The system works by bouncing a variety of different radar "waveforms" off objects. The waveforms, analogous to different colors of light, all reflect back a little differently, giving a clearer picture of objects, Chong said.

It's like sending a variety of human observers into an area and having one report back on particular smells, another on what they hear and a third on what they see.

"Based on what is received, and the way it is received, you can tell something about the scene," Chong said. "Basically, what you want to do is transmit different waveforms over time to learn more about the scene."

The CSU-developed system represents a tenfold improvement over current methods.

Chong's expertise is in electrical and computer engineering, and his role with the team was to develop computer systems that can translate and merge the varying radar information into a useable format.

Chong said the CSU team has demonstrated that the system works, but technological hurdles, such as miniaturizing the radar emitters, remain.

"A lot of technological barriers have to be broken before we get there," he said.