Considerations Affecting the Choice of Frequency for Surveillance Radars.

Abstract

Range performance in the clear, when no clutter or ECM is present, is largely independent of frequency if the aperture size of the receive aerial is held constant, although there is a small but steady fall in performance as the frequency is raised because of increasing receiver noise factor and atmospheric attenuation. If the beamwidth rather than the aperture size is held constant, the performance falls sharply as the frequency increases. The optimum frequency will be that giving the preferred beamwidth with the maximum acceptable aerial size. Clutter from the ground, the sea, and from rain is examined and it is shown that it becomes more severe as the frequency is increased. Clutter from birds, however, becomes less severe at higher frequencies. If constant percentage bandwidth is assumed, the range performance in the presence of noise jamming improves as the frequency is increased. Performance in chaff can improve as the frequency is increased, unless any sort of MTI processing is involved, when a low frequency is to be preferred. (Author)

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1976
Accession Number
ADA041297

Entities

People

  • E. J. Dodsworth

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Atmospheric Attenuation
  • Attenuation
  • Bandwidth
  • Clutter
  • Frequency
  • Grazing Angles
  • Ground Clutter
  • Jamming
  • Noise Jamming
  • Probability
  • Radar
  • Radar Scanning
  • Sea Clutter
  • Surveillance Radar
  • Transmitters

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Radar Systems Engineering.