INTRODUCTION TO RADAR

11.5. INTRODUCTION TO RADAR

Florent Christophe

11.5.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The capability of detecting moving objects in the environment of antennas

radiating electromagnetic waves was anticipated early after the experimental
evidence of such waves, thanks to Heinrich Hertz in 1886. Practical
applications of radar (radio detection and ranging), i.e., the detection of
vehicles and estimation of their position were demonstrated as early as the
1920s in France and Germany. The development of radar was then made
possible by the availability of a microwave pulsed power oscillator, the
magnetron (a derivative of which was mass produced starting in the 1970s
for microwave ovens).

The importance of radar was fully recognized following its role in defending
Great Britain against air attacks during World War II. Much public and
industrial research funding was then invested in the United States and
various European countries for solving technological issues and bringing
radar to its present wide range of applications. These applications, which
include geophysics, meteorology, remote sensing, air traffic control, and
acquisition of military targets, come from the long-range all-weather sensing
capability of radar.

11.5.2. BASIC PRINCIPLES

If the beam radiated by a directive antenna such as a parabolic dish

illuminates an object, some of the incident energy is backscattered and can
be detected in a receiver connected to this same antenna. The direction of
the beam and the round trip time delay between the transmitted and the
received waveform—usually a repetitive pulse—are used to estimate the
location of the scattering object.

11.5.2.1. Radar Equation

Let P t be the power of the transmitter, connected to a directive antenna

which has a gain G t. The power density of the field incident on a target, at
range R , is

(11.21)

The interaction with the target is described through an equivalent radar

cross-section (RCS), defined as a collecting surface σ that would isotropically
reradiate all the received power. This collected power is then written as:

(11.22)

The incident power density D i can be used in (11.9) for computing the
power that has been reradiated to the receiving antenna:

(11.23)

where g r is the gain of the receiving antenna. Combining (11.21)–(11.23) and

assuming the same antenna is used for transmit and receive (i.e., g t =g r =
g ) result in a relationship known as the radar equation:

(11.24)

where L is a loss factor accounting for various effects such as transmitter-to-

antenna or antenna-to-receiver connection losses, propagation losses, etc.

For a radar pulse of duration τ , (11.24) can be used to derive the received
energy P r · τ , and the signal-to-noise ratio after dividing this received
energy by the spectral power density of the receiver noise FkT 0 where F is
the noise figure with respect to the reference noise temperature T 0 (usually
−23
300 K), k being Boltzmann’s constant of value 6.02 10 J/K:

(11.25)

11.5.2.2. Radar Cross-Section

Electromagnetic theory allows for a better understanding of the physics over

the previous definition of radar cross-section, which was simply used for
computing the power flow from transmitter to target and back to the
receiver.

Being a linear process, the scattering of an incident electromagnetic wave by

any object of dielectric properties deviating from the surrounding medium
might be characterized by a scattering matrix S connecting incident field
vector E i to scattered field vector E s through the equation

(11.26)

The fields appear as vectors when projected on a polarization basis (usually

vertical/horizontal, but also right circular/left circular or some other
projection basis). First, diagonal terms of S correspond to copolarization
scattering; second, diagonal terms to cross-polarization scattering.

In the far field of the scattering object, i.e., for range

(11.27)

where D is a typical dimension of this object, E s vanishes as 1/R , and it can

be shown that:

(11.28)

where S rt is the term of the scattering matrix S corresponding to the

transmit and receive polarizations. [1]
Depending on the shape and dielectric properties of the scattering object,
various methods of solving Maxwell equations are available for computing the
scattering

matrix in the far field, hence the radar cross-section of targets. We will next
indicate useful results for some canonical targets.

For a sphere of radius r large with respect to the wavelength, a high-

frequency approximation, allows the derivation of

(11.29)

where ρ is the power reflection coefficient at the sphere surface: for a metal
sphere, ρ = 1 and σ is then equal to the physical cross-section of the sphere.

For a metal plate of surface S , each dimension being large with respect to
the wavelength:

(11.30)

when the incident wave is perpendicular to the plate (the so-called specular
reflection situation) and vanishes rapidly for angles departing from
perpendicular, as most of the energy is reradiated away from the incident
direction. A smoother behavior, allowing for the design of passive radar
calibrators, is obtained through corner reflectors. In such device, triple
successive reflections combine into an outgoing ray parallel to the incident
one whatever the orientation of the reflector, resulting in a quasi-isotropic
behaviour like that of the sphere, but at higher RCS for the same physical
cross-section. Table 11.9 indicates typical values.

Real targets behave quite differently from the above due to the combination
of many scattering mechanisms, depending on the shape and material of the
target, the wavelength, polarization, and the direction of the illuminating
wave.

A simplified model for understanding complex target backscattering adds the

contributions of canonical scatterers distributed across the skin of the
target. The rapid change of relative phase of those scatterers with respect to
frequency or angular presentation results in a noise-like appearance of
respective diagrams, somehow similar to the measured ones.

More accurate modeling of the backscattering mechanisms of real targets

makes use of multiple interactions, creeping waves, waveguide modes for air
intakes, etc.

11.5.2.3. Clutter and Other Environmental Effects

The beam radiated by a radar antenna often illuminates the natural

environment, which results in backscattering energy that may compete with
possible targets that the radar is searching for at the same ranges. Main
sources for such so-called clutter effects are surface scattering by
irregularities of the soil—either bare or vegetated—and volume scattering,
mostly coming from rain cells. As opposed to coherent scattering
mechanisms responsible for target backscattering, natural environment
backscattering is mostly built up by superposition of a large number of
individual scattering contributors with random position, i.e., making it an
incoherent process in which the backscattered energy will be proportional to
the surface or to the volume of the illuminated area, respectively. Since this
backscattering energy can be associated with an equivalent radar cross-
section through the radar equation (11.24), the ratio of such RCS to the
illuminated surface or volume is defined respectively as the surface or volume
reflectivity. Such reflectivity usually increases with various factors, mainly:

Table 11.9. Radar Cross-section for Three Canonical Targets of 1 m2

Physical Cross-section

Sphere Circular plate Trihedral

Peak RCS @ 1 1m 2 140 m 2 140 m 2

GHz
2 2 2
Peak RCS @ 10 1m 14,000 m 14,000 m
GHz

Angular behavior Isotropic HPBW 10º @ 1 GHz, 1º @ Quasiisotropic

10 GHz
 For ground clutter: soil roughness, vegetation density, angle of incidence,
frequency

For atmospheric clutter: rain rate, frequency

Other Environmental Aspects. The interaction of radar waves with

natural media, reported as clutter when negatively affecting target detection,
may also be directly used in remote sensing techniques for earth resources
or geophysical parameter characterization.

Other effects of wave propagation are to be expected on radar signals; for

example, for long-range ground radar, atmospheric attenuation, tropospheric
refraction, and interference of direct and ground surface-reflected rays need
to be considered, or ionospheric effects for spaceborne radar observation of
the earth. Part 1 of this section gave indications and references dealing with
these effects.

Principles of Clutter Rejection. In many configurations, the clutter RCS is

stronger than the RCS of expected targets, resulting in the risk of blinding
the radar. Improvements come from exploitation of the Doppler effect,[2]
which creates a frequency shift of the backscattered signal proportional to
the radial velocity of the target (i.e., the projection υ r of the velocity on line
of sight) according to the formula:

(11.31)

Since the signals backscattered by clutter are almost stationary, they can be
filtered out by zero Doppler rejection, which is achieved through the moving
target indicator (MTI). Target signals remain unaffected to a certain extent as
far as they do not approach zero Doppler, which could be the case for targets
with tangential velocity, or blind velocities resulting from undersampling of
Doppler frequencies. This effect will be illustrated below.

A further opportunity for reducing clutter effects is through exploiting the

polarization properties of clutter backscattering; for example, quasispherical
rain droplets produce backscattering almost cross-polarized with respect to a
circularly polarized incident wave, and therefore most radars which are likely
to operate in front of strong atmospheric clutter use circular polarization.
11.5.2.4. Detection Performances

When considering the received radar signal, one of two hypotheses will
apply: either it is noise only, or, the addition of noise and signal
backscattered by a target.

For making a best guess, it can be shown that the optimum use of the
received energy is matched filtering (i.e., processing by a filter tailored to
the transmitted signal for minimal noise bandwidth) followed by
thresholding. If the filter output is higher than the threshold, a target is
detected. The performance of such processing is evaluated by the probability
of correctly detecting a target (probability of detection) against the
probability of erroneously declaring a target when in fact only noise is
present (a false alarm).

The probability of a false alarm depends on the ratio between the threshold
level and r.m.s noise level and the statistics of the noise, white Gaussian for
thermal noise, or more complicated when clutter is added to Gaussian noise.
Once the threshold is determined, the probability of detection might be
computed starting from the signal-to-noise ratio and the statistics of the
signal, derived from the fluctuation of RCS around its mean level.

For most situations, many successive pulses hit the targets and can
contribute to improving the detection performances. The best case is that of
coherent integration before thresholding, for which an improvement factor n
in the signal-to-noise ratio is obtained, where n is the number of available
pulses. When such coherent or Doppler processing is not feasible,
noncoherent (or postprocessing) schemes are used, resulting in some
degradation with respect to the optimal case.

11.5.2.5. Resolution, Accuracy, and Ambiguity of Radar Measurements

The resolution width of a radar is defined as the range of one of the

parameters used for locating a target (distance, angular position, Doppler
velocity when applicable) for which the output of the processing filter
remains larger than or equal to half the peak power corresponding to the
exact location of a target. With such a definition, two targets of equal RCS
can be distinguished when they are separated by more than one resolution
width. A resolution cell is the multidimensional patch having the resolution
width along each axis. A high-resolution radar will have a resolution cell
smaller than the targets (usually along the distance or Doppler velocity axis),
thus allowing the analysis of target features such as its length. Information
derived from such high-resolution radar is the basis for automatic target
recognition.

Angular Resolution. Let Δ θ and be the half-power beamwidths of the

antenna in the horizontal and vertical planes. Due to the two-way effect, the
half-power beamwidth of the radar—defining its angular resolution—is then
and .

Range Resolution Along the distance axis, when dealing with a radar pulse
of duration τ , advancing or delaying the processing gate by τ /2 from the
exact round-trip time delay of the target will result in getting half the
maximum power (only half of the signal is available), and the corresponding
time resolution width is therefore τ . The related range resolution width
taking into account the round trip is then

(11.32)

But we also have to consider the so-called pulse compression technique, for
which the radar pulse of duration τ is modulated with a bandwidth Δ f large
with respect to 1/τ (k = τ Δ f is called the compression factor, being equal to
1 for nonmodulated pulse). It can be demonstrated that matched filtering
results in the resolution that would give a pulse of duration τ /k . [3] A formula
which remains valid for both nonmodulated and pulse compression cases is
therefore:

(11.33)

Doppler Resolution. In Fourier analysis, when duration T is available for

observing signals, a frequency resolution 1/T is achievable. Since the
Doppler frequency is related to radial velocity through equation (11.31), the
velocity resolution width can be derived:

(11.34)

where T is the duration available for coherent processing, smaller than or

equal to the duration of the transmitted beam illuminating the target.

Accuracy of Radar Measurements. Some radars (e.g., tracking radars)

are designed for achieving accurate location of the target; it can be shown
that suitable processing, such as interpolating from overlapping resolution
cells, allows for a standard deviation related to the resolution width by
equation:

(11.35)

where p is one of the parameters to be measured (angle, distance, radial

velocity). A signal-to-noise ratio of 13 dB, which is suitable for target
detection, would then allow an improvement of a factor around 9 for
estimating the parameter p when compared to the corresponding resolution
width. [4]

The Ambiguities of Radar Measurements. A usual radar waveform is a

pulse, the duration of which has to be short enough to overcome detrimental
blinding of the receiver during transmission. [5] Targets located closer to the
radar than the blind range R b are undetectable:

(11.36)

But a large integration time T is also needed for Doppler separation of

targets from clutter and for improved signal-to-noise. The obvious solution is
to repeat the initial short pulse, with repetition period T r, resulting in n
identical pulses received during T = nT r. Such repetition introduces, on one
hand, the risk of erroneously referring the received signal to the last
transmitted pulse when actually it comes from a previous one; the error in
distance would be then a multiple of the ambiguous distance R a.

[6][7]

(11.37)

On the other hand, spectral analysis techniques conclude that sampling a

signal with period T r introduces a repetition in its spectrum of period 1/ T r;
such repetition creates an ambiguity in radial velocity (or Doppler) analysis
determined by:

(11.38)

Searching for long-range high-velocity targets implies ambiguities in either

distances or velocities, and postprocessing will have to overcome this
situation. [8]

11.5.3. 11.20

Improved performance and reduced life-cycle costs are driving factors for
injecting new technologies in radar design. Next we will discuss some of the
technological issues which are specific to radar.

11.5.3.1. Transmitters

The first generation of pulsed power microwave tube, the magnetron, was
able to deliver megawatts of peak power for a few microseconds, the primary
energy being stored in the modulator and delivered as a high-voltage pulse.
Due to its self-oscillating behavior, pulse-to-pulse coherency for Doppler
processing was difficult to achieve, and next generation of tubes, such as the
klystron or the traveling wave tube, are amplifiers permitting longer pulses
for pulse compression together with coherent integration. Such vacuum
tubes rely on electron beams interacting with microwave cavities. But they
suffer from the need to handle high voltages and use heated cathodes of
limited lifetime. Furthermore, the handling of high peak powers may result in
the need for pressurized transmission lines to the antenna for avoiding
dielectric breakdown.

New-generation transmitters are therefore relying increasingly on solid state

amplifiers through the association of single transistors able to deliver from a
few watts to a few 100 watts of peak power, depending on frequency.

According to the scheme given below, specific components are to be

associated with the radar transmitter for avoiding destruction of the low-
noise receiver by part of the transmitted power: a circulator, which is a three-
port device with a nonreciprocal ferrite core, allows transfer of more than
99% of the energy from the transmitter to the antenna, while energy coming
from the antenna is transferred to the receiver. Depending on the
transmitted power, further protection of the receiver might be brought by
limiting diodes, possibly combined with a plasma switch. Insertion loss of
those devices has to be kept as low as possible (less than 1 dB is currently
achieved).

11.5.3.2. Antennas

The classical radar antenna is a parabolic dish fed by a horn at its focus,
rotating around one axis for panoramic surveillance or two for target
tracking. Improvements come from multiple reflectors, such as the
Cassegrainian assembly for compactness (which is required for airborne
radar) and sidelobe control. Close to the focal plane, multiple feeds are of
interest: either for stacking beams at various elevation angles in a panoramic
radar or for simultaneously receiving a single target echo in slightly
separated beams for improving angular measurements in a tracking radar.
Flat antennas built with slotted waveguides stacked together and suitably
fed by a wave-guide distribution of energy are now widely used for
applications where weight or rotating inertia is constrained. In such an array
antenna, each slot behaves as an individual radiating element whose
contribution combined with that of the others builds a far field equivalent to
what a parabolic dish of same aperture would produce.

But a breakthrough in radar antennas has been brought by electronic

scanning, in which the mechanical rotation of the antenna is replaced by
phase shifting of individual subsets of an array antenna. Electronic scanning
might be achieved in one direction by a one-dimensional phase variation
—each waveguide of the previous array antenna is fed through a phase
shifter—or in two directions, which requires addressing each of the radiating
elements individually. In such two-dimensional scanning arrays, the individual
radiating elements can be dipoles, open waveguides, or metallic patches on a
dielectric substrate. Phase shifter technology relies on either solid state
diode switches or ferrite transmission lines, the insertion phase of which is
modulated by an externally applied magnetic field. Insertion losses, power
handling capacity, and accuracy are the main parameters for selecting these
key components of an electronic scanning antenna.

An active array is an electronic scanning antenna combined with the splitting

of the single high-power transmitter into many individual low-power solid
state elements. These elements can be integrated into hybrid or even
monolithic integrated circuits and brought together into a single
transmit/receive module power amplification, phase shifting, switching, low
noise amplification, and filtering for reception. Such transmit/receive modules
are likely to be the core of most future radar systems as soon as low-cost
production technology is available.

11.5.3.3. Receivers

The role of receivers is to transfer a very faint signal embedded into much
higher parasitic signals (coming from clutter or even jammers) to a digital
signal processor. Low-noise preamplification is now state of the art, with
noise figures as low as 1 to 2 dB at frequencies ranging from 1 to 18 GHz.
Frequency down-conversion can be performed with high dynamic range
mixers, and bandpass filtering prepares for baseband down-conversion in
both phase and quadrature for digitizing without loss of the phase. In an
alternative scheme, a single channel is digitized with a residual carrier, and
separation of real and imaginary parts of the complex signal is performed
through numerical Hilbert filtering.

Due to the high dynamic range of signals resulting from the power −4
dependence with range—i.e., time delay referred to the transmitted pulse
—compensation can be accomplished by applying an inversely varying gain
prior to the final amplification or digital conversion. According to the highest
clutter-to-noise or jammer-to-noise ratio which can be expected, from 1 bit to
16 bits or even more analog-to-digital converters are required; clock rates are
slightly higher than twice the radar bandwidth, the exact value depending on
the roll-off of the antialiasing filter. In a radar using linear shift of the carrier
frequency during the pulse (also called “chirp” radar), pulse compression can
be performed by a surface acoustic wave or a bulk acoustic wave device
having delay-versus-frequency characteristics inverse to the transmitted
pulse. In such a device operating at intermediate frequencies of 50 to 150
MHz and time delays up to 100 microseconds, the design of the piezoelectric
transducers allows tailoring of the required characteristics.

11.5.3.4. Signal Processors

The digital signal processor is in charge of performing tasks as various as

pulse compression if not performed in the analogic part of the receiver,
digital beam forming for a phased array antenna, Doppler filtering or MTI,
thresholding or plot extraction, tracking, plot-to-track association, and
display management. A popular radar display is the plan polar indicator
(PPI), which creates a horizontal projection of the scene surrounding the
sensor, according to the azimuth rotation of the antenna and the range of the
echoes detected in the beam direction.

The computing load for the most demanding of functions may range up to
many hundreds of floating point operations per nanosecond (or gigaflops).
The availability of general-purpose digital signal processors approaching
such figures makes it less and less necessary to develop costly on-purpose
processors.

11.5.4. RADAR APPLICATIONS TO AERONAUTICS

11.5.4.1. Air Traffic Control

One of the main applications of radar to aeronautics is air traffic control

(ATC). Long-range air surveillance is performed from selected national
locations for controlling continental parts of major air routes. The associated
radar sensors operate in the 1215–1400 MHz band, with large antennas
(typical reflectors are 8 × 6 m, uniformly rotating around 6 rpm and powerful
transmitters in the 100 kW range allows detection of general aviation and
jetliners beyond 200 nm. Detection plots and the associated tracks built
through consecutive illuminations of the target by the rotating antenna are
made available to controllers by video or synthetic displays.

But beyond the cost of such a large radar (which makes it difficult to install in
developing countries) there are also some major technical drawbacks:

The accuracy of the elevation estimate at long range is much poorer than
required for controlling vertical separation of routes of 2,000 or even 1,000
ft.

The radioelectrical horizon at 200 nm is about 25,000 ft (see Part 1), which
means that only jetliners close to their maximum flight level can be
detected at such range.

Therefore, other sensors are required for filling those gaps, such as the so-
called secondary radar. A secondary surveillance radar (SSR) can be
understood as replacing the radio wave backscattering roundtrip with two
single trips: on board passenger aircraft or for flying under IFR conditions, a
transponder is placed which detects the incident radar signal and
retransmits a similar signal. This results in a power balance much easier to
achieve in each single trip, through the R −2 telecommunications equation
(11.12) instead of the R − 4 radar equation (11.24) for round trip. The
required signal-to-noise ratio is therefore reached for lower transmit power
and antenna gain, resulting in reduced cost for the radar,[9] which can be
introduced in a given territory with higher density than the previously
described system, which we will now call primary radar . Due to technological
constraints, the transponder has to receive and transmit at slightly different
frequencies and with additional time delay. These parameters, which need to
be accounted for in the secondary radar receiver and processor, are
normalized according to ICAO regulations. In addition, the retransmitted
pulse can be encoded with a message indicating the flight number (A mode)
and on board measured flight level, (C mode) which allows accurate three-
dimensional tracking from the ground.

In areas of high-density traffic and with possibly few secondary radars

interrogating various transponders nearly at the same time, garbling
situations may occur. Overloading either the transponders or the radar
receivers with quasisimultaneous pulses results in track losses. To overcome
such situation, S mode has been introduced, in which a given transponder is
activated by a selective interrogation included in the encoded received pulse.
In addition, S mode operation specifies a monopulse antenna for the radar,
which allows for improved azimuth accuracy.

The availability of S mode transponders on board every aircraft operating

under IFR conditions, which will occur as a result of ICAO recommendations,
allows the implementation of a new airborne collision avoidance system.
Under this concept, the interrogation, reception, and processing are
performed on board, thus directly providing the pilot with the necessary
information concerning the surroundings for en route collision avoidance.

11.5.4.2. Other Ground-Based Radars

Approach and Ground Surveillance Radars. For accurate guidance of

aircraft at landing approach and for all-weather surveillance of taxiways and
runways, short-range radars are used with high enough resolution—i.e.
centimeter wavelengths and beyond with medium-sized antennas—for good
accuracy and detection of the various possible obstacles.

Meteorological Radar. The adverse effects of rain clutter on air target

detection has been pointed out. Specific radars have been designed for
meteorological purposes and are operated for detecting strong rain cells
associated with thunderstorms and contributing to avoiding lightning
hazards to aircraft. Of further interest for improving safety at landing is from
the ability of radar to make fine Doppler analysis of the rain echoes and
therefore detect specific hazards due to wind shear at final approach. For the
few cases of dry wind shears, detection through the specific Doppler
signature of turbulent layers at UHF is considered.

11.5.4.3. Airborne Meteorological Radar

The need for aircraft to find a safe route far away from ground radars in case
of thunderstorms has led to the equipment of airborne meteorological radars
protected by a radome in the nose of the aircraft. Operating at centimeter
wavelengths, such a radar provides the pilot with a display of heavy rain cells
at ranges up to 15 nm, allowing the route to be adapted. A recently added
option makes this nose radar also able to detect the specific Doppler
signature of wind shears at the expense of a high-quality radome for
avoiding detrimental ground clutter effects induced by sidelobes resulting
from radome-to-antenna interactions.

11.5.4.4. Other Airborne Radars

In preparation for landing or for terrain awareness, direct measurement of

altitude above the ground is available from a radioaltimeter, which is a low-
power down-looking radar.

11.5.5. OVERVIEW OF MILITARYREQUIREMENTS AND

SPECIFIC DEVELOPMENTS

In addition to the need of detecting, identifying, and, if required, directing

actions for shooting down targets flying beyond the altitude/velocity domain
of civilian aircraft, the major specificity of air defense radars is robustness
against adverse countermeasures. Therefore, ground systems have to face
many challenges: modern targets of military interest may have reduced RCS
(they are stealthy) and can be associated with active countermeasures
(jammers) which can be carried by the target itself for self-protection, or
come from standoff; passive decoys may also be encountered.

Against jammers, beam and waveform agility is required, which can be

brought to the radar by the technology of active arrays. Against decoys,
improved resolution may help and is also of interest against stealth targets
when associated with increased radiated power.

But a drastic revision of radar design principles may be necessary for

restoring detection performances in the modern countermeasures
environment: low-frequency sensors (at UHF and below) and bistatic
configurations (with widely separated transmitter and receiver) are among
the promising techniques.

Other applications for radars on board military aircraft include:

Air-to-air detection, which is performed, for example, with a large rotating

antenna protected by a lenticular radome mounted piggyback on board a
large standoff platform, but is also associated with fire control in the nose
radar of combat aircraft.

Air-to-ground surveillance and reconnaissance, where synthetic aperture

(which will be presented below and illustrated in Part 11 for space
applications) allows for high enough resolution at long range.

Those missions where radar is the key sensor are also to be performed
despite adverse countermeasures.

11.5.6. OVERVIEW OF RADAR APPLICATIONS TO SPACE

11.5.6.1. Earth Observation Missions

LEO satellites are suitable platforms for global observation of the earth with
revisit time matched to natural phenomena. Radar observation of the sea
surface at or near vertical incidence has proven its value for oceanography
through roughness analysis (inducing wind strength and direction), as well
as sea-level measurements with centimetric accuracy (inducing salinity or
temperature gradients, currents, etc.). In addition to its wide bandwidth, the
major technical challenge with such radar is to remove both instrumental and
radiowave propagation offsets and drifts, which would reduce the accuracy
of the altitude measurements.

Radar has also demonstrated its capability for imaging the earth surface,
offering all-weather operations as opposed to passive visible or infrared
observation, and, surprisingly, with a ground resolution not as degraded as
one could expect from the wavelength ratio. This comes from the exploitation
of the Doppler spreading of ground clutter, known as synthetic aperture
radar (or SAR) techniques. Since each scatterer on the ground has an
apparent radial velocity:

(11.39)

where υ p is the platform velocity with respect to the ground and α is the
angle between line of sight and velocity vector, it appears from equation
(11.31) that a Doppler analysis of the scattered signals results in the angular
analysis of the ground scatterers in the antenna footprint. It can be
combined with the usual time delay analysis into a two-dimensional mapping
of the ground. The range resolution of 10 m can be easily obtained with a 15
MHz bandwidth waveform (see equation (11.30)), which projects on the
ground for an incident angle of 60º as 20 m cross-track. Along-track
resolution can be derived from combining equations (11.39), (11.31), and
(11.36) for α close to 90º:

(11.40)

which is similar to the far-field resolution of a synthetic antenna of aperture

length 2Tυ p, where T is the coherent processing time for the Doppler
analysis.

The resolution of 20 m for R = 1,000 km at a wavelength of 6 cm, υ p = 6,000

m/s corresponds to T = 0.25 s, which looks more practical to implement than
the real antenna of length 3 km that would directly give the same along-track
resolution!

Further implications of spaceborne SAR and related technologies are given in

Part 11.
11.5.6.2. Other Applications of Radar to Spacecraft

Radar has many other applications to spacecraft operations; for example,

surface-based radars for trajectography of launch vehicles or for in-orbit
satellite or even debris observation.

The synthetic aperture radar presented in the previous section is also of

interest for planetology studies from dedicated orbiters,[10] the limited mass,
energy, and data stream available for the payload resulting in reduced
performance with respect to Earth observation.

On-board radar also has applications in rendezvous or docking applications.

[1]
A polarimetric radar would be sensitive to more than one term of the
scattering matrix (S), adding characteristic information concerning the
target.

[2]The Doppler effect may be understood as the phase rotation induced by

enlarging or shortening the round trip from radar to target and back when
the radar and/or the target is moving.

[3]This pulse compression technique allows for separating the power balance
problem (a larger pulse duration gives a larger usable energy for a given
available peak power from the transmitter) and the range resolution
problem. Among others, classical modulati...

[4]
In tracking radars, other improvements can be used when switching from a
detection to a tracking mode: larger integration time and postprocessing
such as Kalman filtering. A multiport antenna with associated receivers also
allows for monopulse processing, ...

[5]Some radars make use of a continuous waveform (or CW), but these need
separate transmit and receive antennas with specific attention paid to their
decoupling.

[6]This pulse compression technique allows for separating the power balance
problem (a larger pulse duration gives a larger usable energy for a given
available peak power from the transmitter) and the range resolution
problem. Among others, classical modulations for pulse compression are
swept frequency or pseudo-random biphase or polyphase modulations.

[7]
[7]
In tracking radars, other improvements can be used when switching from a
detection to a tracking mode: larger integration time and postprocessing
such as Kalman filtering. A multiport antenna with associated receivers also
allows for monopulse processing, which produces the angular accuracy
indicated above without negative impact of the target RCS.

[8]The choice of a high pulse repetition frequency (or PRF) will make such a
radar ambiguous in range, a low PRF will make it ambiguous in Doppler,
whereas a medium PRF will make it ambiguous in both range and Doppler.
The switching of one PRF to another within the same burst of pulses
illuminating a target allows this ambiguity issue to be solved.

[9]A linear antenna with azimuth-only directivity is used in secondary radar,

since limited antenna gain satisfies the power balance and no direct
elevation measurement is required. For increased azimuth accuracy, this
linear antenna can be split into halves for monopulse processing.

[10]Radar echoes from the Moon or planets have also been observed from
Earth-based experiments, making use of very large dish antennas such as at
the Arecibo Observatory.

Citation
EXPORT
Mark Davies: Standard Handbook for Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineers.
INTRODUCTION TO RADAR, Chapter (McGraw-Hill Professional, 2003),
AccessEngineering

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