  This paper describes some key ideas and applications of cognitive radars,
highlighting the limits and the path forward. Cognitive radars are systems
based on the perception-action cycle of cognition that sense the environment,
learn from it relevant information about the target and the background, then
adapt the radar sensor to optimally satisfy the needs of their mission
according to a desired goal. The concept of cognitive radar was introduced
originally for active radar only. In this paper we describe how this paradigm
can be applied also to passive radar. In particular, we describe (i) cognitive
active radars that work in a spectrally dense environment and change the
transmitted waveform on-the-fly to avoid interference with the primary user of
the channel, such as broadcast or communication systems, (ii) cognitive active
radars that adjust transmit waveform parameters to achieve a specified level of
target tracking performance, and (iii) cognitive passive radars, that contrary
to the active radars cannot directly change the transmitted waveforms, but can
instead select the best source of opportunity to improve detection and tracking
performance.
