Yuri Abramovich

Biography

Yuri Abramovich’s solutions for handling interference and jamming have helped advance the capabilities of long-range radar and are integral to some of the world’s most advanced radar systems. Dr. Abramovich is most known for his work on suppressing interference in Over-The-Horizon Radars caused by natural sources such as thunderstorms or deliberate jamming. These systems can detect air and sea targets up to thousands of miles away and are used for military applications, maritime reconnaissance, and drug enforcement. He has conceived, developed, and evolved powerful adaptive signal-processing techniques that have demonstrated their ability to protect Over-The-Horizon Radar systems from interference while preserving the ability to detect targets. His techniques are known for achieving near-theoretical performance when applied in real-world situations where other proposed methods fell short. His diagonal loading principle for regularization of adaptive radar is used to improve adaptive filters. Dr. Abramovich also explored alternatives to diagonal loading, developing methods applicable to passive direction finding in nonuniform adaptive arrays and source detection. Considered one of the important developments in signal-processing theory in the past decade, he introduced the expected likelihood concept to normalize general likelihood ratio detectors for improved performance. Already a leading research engineer in the Ukraine, where he personally engineered many of his solutions into naval long-range radars and anti-ballistic missile multifunction radars, Dr. Abramovich emigrated to Australia in 1994 where he was in charge of a technical team that implemented a number of patented adaptive and signal-processing algorithms in a fielded high-frequency surface demonstrator. He helped to commercialize this system while also developing adaptive processing algorithms for advanced maritime detection and tracking for Australia’s Over-The-Horizon Radar defense network.

An IEEE Fellow and recipient of the European Association for Signal Processing’s Technical Achievement Award (2011), Dr. Abramovich is currently a principal research scientist with WR Systems Ltd., Fairfax, VA, USA. Abramovich was awarded the 2014 IEEE Dennis J. Picard Medal.