4.2
RADAR HANDBOOK
Time gating allows the blanking of direct transmitter leakage into the receiver. Thispermits the use of a single antenna for transmit and receive, which otherwise wouldnot be feasible for CW radar due to excessive transmit/receive isolation requirements.Pulsed radars can also use range gating, a specific form of time gating, which dividesthe interpulse period into cells or
range gates
. The duration of each cell is typicallyless than or equal to the inverse of the transmit pulse bandwidth. Range gating helpseliminate excess receiver noise from competing with target returns and allows rangemeasurement with pulse delay ranging (i.e., measuring the time between transmissionof a pulse and reception of the target echo).Pulsed transmission doppler radars have historically been categorized as
movingtarget indication (MTI)
or
pulse doppler
. MTI typically eliminates clutter by passingthe received returns from multiple coherent pulses through a filter with a stopbandplaced in spectral regions of heavy clutter concentrations. Moving targets with dop-pler frequencies outside the stopband are passed onto detection processing. Pulsedoppler radars, on the other hand, resolve and enhance targets within a particulardoppler band while rejecting clutter and other returns outside the doppler band of interest. This is typically accomplished with a contiguous bank of doppler filtersformed between two of the coherent pulse train’s spectral lines, one of which is thecentral line. Range gating precedes the doppler filter bank. The bandwidth of eachdoppler filter is inversely proportional to the duration of the coherent pulse train thatis processed to form the doppler filter bank. This process forms a matched filter tothe entire pulse train.
2,3
MTI and pulse doppler radars share the following characteristics:
●
Coherent transmission and reception; that is, each transmitted pulse and the receiverlocal oscillator are synchronized to a free-running, highly stable oscillator.
●
Coherent processing to reject main-beam clutter, enhance target detection, and aidin target discrimination or classification.MTI radars can also be implemented using a doppler filter bank, blurring the historicdelineation between MTI and pulse doppler radars. As a result, this book will defineMTI radars as those radars whose PRF is sufficiently low enough to provide an unam-biguous range measurement, via pulse delay ranging, over the radar’s instrumentedrange. The unambiguous range
R
u
is given by
c
/(2
f
R
), where
c
is the speed of lightand
f
R
is the PRF. Radars with PRFs that result in range ambiguities within the rangecoverage of interest will be referred to as pulse doppler radars and will be the focusof this chapter.
Applications.
Pulse doppler is applied principally to radar systems requiringthe detection of moving targets in a severe clutter environment. Table 4.1 lists typi-cal applications and requirements.
4–12
This chapter will deal principally with airborneapplications, although the basic principles can also be applied to the surface-basedcase. Only monostatic radars will be considered.
PRFs.
Pulsed radars that employ doppler are divided into three broad PRF cat-egories: low, medium, and high. A low-PRF radar is one in which the ranges of interestare unambiguous while the radial velocities (doppler frequencies) are usually highlyambiguous. As discussed previously, this type of radar is called
moving target indica-tion (MTI)
. MTI radars are generally not categorized as pulse doppler radars, althoughthe principles of operation are similar.
13
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