Where Next For Airborne AESA Technology?
A.M.Kinghom, Fellow, lET
SELEX GALILEO
Ferry Road, Edinburgh EH5 2XS, Scotland.
Abstract- Airborne radar has evolved from early systems
where almost all radar characteristics were fixed to
today's highly flexible, software-driven systems. The most
recent advance has been the widespread adoption of active
electronically scanned array (AESA) antennas, which has
given the system designer unprecedented control of
antenna characteristics. However, in common with most
conventional radars, even these systems only operate
within a limited frequency band. This paper argues that
the next major advance will be the advent of wideband
and multi-band systems, thus addressing the major
remaining constraint facing the system designer and
offering the capability for a step change in the
functionality and performance of future systems.
Keywords- airborne radar, AESA, wideband
I. INTRODUCTION.
A ctive Electronically Scanned Arrays (AESAs) for radar
applications are a mature technology for large ground and
naval systems, and are becoming firmly established worldwide
in a range of airborne systems. Airborne AESA radars are in
front-line service in the US, and the technology is rapidly
finding its way into European platforms- Eurofighter, Rafale,
Sentinel and Tornado. [1]
AESA technology is particularly advantageous in airborne
radars, with their tight constraints on space limiting the use of
other antenna technologies. However it is only because of
recent advances in reducing the cost and, especially, the weight
of AESAs that they have found more widespread use in
airborne systems.
The tri-national AMSAR programme between the UK, France
and Germany has supported airborne AESA technology
development in Europe since 1993, and subsequent
government and industrial investment has brought the
technology to production status at an affordable price. [2]
In the UK, airborne AESA technology has been developed for
both fighter aircraft and a range of airborne surveillance
platforms.
Now that the technology has reached this level of maturity it is
pertinent to ask what the next steps will be, and what the
implications are for future military capabilities.
Current AESA technology gives the system designer almost
complete control of the radar antenna pattern (within physical
limits) and rapid beam agility. The increasing use of digital
beamforming offers increased capabilities to adaptively vary
the antenna characteristics for purposes such as jammer and
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clutter suppression. One view of the future is the ever-
increasing use of digital processing, with systems having more
and more independent receiving channels. Whilst there are
undoubtedly benefits in this approach, the technical and
economic challenges are immense. High performance receiver
technology continues to prove remarkably resistant to efforts to
reduce its size, weight, cost and power consumption, and
airborne systems in particular remain constrained in the scale
of digital processing they can deploy- a constraint principally
due to the limited availability of cooling.
Another view of the future is dramatic increases in the
operating frequency band of systems. Current AESA
technology for large 2D arrays offers only modest bandwidths,
but new developments suggest that 2:1 (e.g. 5GHz-I0GHz)
and potentially over 4: 1 frequency coverage is achievable with
good performance. Whilst antennas of this type have been
mooted for some time as the basis of multi-function RF
systems (combining radar, electronic warfare and
communications functionality), less attention has been given to
exploiting these ideas for multi-band radar, which appears to
offer immense advantages in many applications.
Electromagnetic design of the antenna array is one challenge;
the other, probably more difficult problem, is in the wideband
electronics to support it. Here the advent of newer device
technologies such as Gallium Nitride may offer significant
advantages in achieving the necessary levels of performance
and efficiency.
Radar has evolved from early systems with fixed frequencies,
fixed waveforms and fixed antenna patterns to today's AESA
systems with highly agile waveforms and beam patterns. The
next big step forward is to give the system designer a
comparable level of flexibility in choosing the operating
frequency and bandwidth. If this technical challenge can be
met, future systems will offer another step change in capability
over today's AESA systems.
This paper will consider the current state-of-the-art, the
technical challenges facing the designers of wideband systems,
potential technology solutions, and will conclude by discussing
the potential benefits of such technology advances to the end
user.
II. AIRBORNE AESA RADAR- THE CURRENT STATE-
OF-THE-ART.
The majority of airborne AESA radar developments have been
for fighter aircraft, and these systems are largely designed to
operate in X-band (8-12GHz). Systems have been developed
for most US fighters, Rafale and Eurofighter and these systems
are at varying stages of development and production. These
systems typically have an operating bandwidth of around 100/0, wall or sandwich designs, optimized to provide low loss over a
and are designed to support radar operation and data linking for range of incidence angles. Wider band performance can be
missile systems. achieved using multi-layered designs, but this approach has its
Airborne surveillance radars using passive and active ESA limitations. An electromagnetically 'thin' radome is probably
technology are now becoming more common. These include the only ideal solution, but such designs are unlikely to be
AEW systems such as Erieye, Phalcon and Wedgetail, and strong enough to support the necessary aerodynamic loads.
ground surveillance systems such as Global Hawk, JSTARS Radomes are thus likely to be a limiting factor in wideband
and ASTOR. More recently smaller AESA surveillance systems. One possible solution- at least for new airframes- is a
systems, derived from fighter aircraft technology, have started conformal antenna, with either no radome or an integrated thin
to emerge, including Selex's Seaspray and PicoSAR radars. protective layer. However as discussed below this approach has
However whilst airborne surveillance radars exist in several its own problems.
different frequency bands, individual systems remain
essentially narrowband, with bandwidths in the 5% to 10% V. ARRAY FACE DESIGN.
region. Current narrowband array designs use an array of radiating
elements disposed on a grid (typically hexagonal) with a
III. WIDEBAND RADAR TECHNOLOGY.
spacing of ')...12 between elements. This grid provides the most
Development of wideband multi-function RF systems has been efficient way of filling an aperture, and has been widely
a significant area of investigation for some time. Large ground adopted as it minimizes the number of transmit/receive
and naval systems have used the expedient of deploying modules, and hence the cost, of an array. Radiating elements
multiple different radars within a single integrated system, but used include waveguides (circular, square, usually dielectric
this is generally impractical in an airborne system where space loaded); tapered slot antennas (including Vivaldi and notch
is strictly limited. Reflector antennas can offer a wide operating type elements); and dipoles (including bowtie and Munk [3]
bandwidth, but their bulk often precludes their use in airborne type elements).
systems. Wideband designs require a radically different approach. In
Clearly wideband electronically scanned arrays, if they can be general, to avoid grating lobes, the element spacing must be
developed to a satisfactory level of performance, offer the most chosen to be "-./2 at the highest operating frequency. In practice,
attractive solution for airborne applications; and in most cases especially if wide scan angles are to be achieved, an even
active arrays (i.e. with power generation distributed across the tighter spacing can be desirable- which has significant
array face) are preferred in order to maximise performance and implications for array cost.
efficiency.
Current airborne AESA systems are limited in bandwidth by a
number of factors:
• Radomes- wideband designs are difficult, especially in
complex shapes such as fighter nose radomes.
• Array face design- array radiating elements and the array
grid are the main factors that affect bandwidth.
Optimizing designs for large 2D arrays to provide wide
bandwidth and wide scan angle capability is difficult.
• Beam steering- almost all current designs use phase
steering, which is only a narrowband approximation to
the ideal of true time delay steering. 'Instantaneous' and
'Operational' bandwidths are factors which need to be
considered here.
• Wideband power generation- the main challenge here is
to achieve satisfactory levels of power-added efficiency,
which are much more readily achievable in narrowband
designs.
Each of these factors will now be considered in more detail.

IV. RADOMES.
Radomes are an essential part of any airborne radar system.
Their shape is primarily dictated by aerodynamic
considerations and, in some cases, requirements for low radar
cross-section. Shapes vary enormously. In low speed platforms
Figure 1- Active Reflection Coefficient as a function offrequency and scan
(helicopters, DAVs) aerodynamic factors are less critical and a angle for wideband array design.
more electromagnetically benign shape is possible.
Conventional narrowband designs are normally either "-./4 solid
Designs for wideband arrays are generally dependent upon
extensive numerical optimization.[4] Figure 1 shows the
capability of an example design. Each antenna element presents
a match which varies with frequency and array scan angle (the
so-called 'active match') and in general, to achieve satisfactory
performance, it is desirable to achieve a return loss of -1 OdB or
better. The example shown achieves this for scan angles out to
60° for frequencies between around 4.5GHz and 17GHz.
Current (unpublished) research suggests this approach can be
extended to offer bandwidths in excess of 4: 1 from large arrays
(several hundred elements or more.)
A further complication is the potential requirement for
polarization control. This may be necessary for some multi-
function applications; it is also a prerequisite if it is desired to
build a conformal antenna on anything other than a very gently
curved surface. Polarization control effectively requires
duplication of radiating elements and all their supporting
electronics, so it is potentially a very costly requirement. Added
to the higher element density needed for wideband arrays, this
may preclude an affordable technical solution. Any future
system design will need to consider carefully the costlbenefit
tradeoffs in adopting a dual polarized design.
VI. BEAM STEERING.
Beam-steering in current systems is almost exclusively based
on phase control. Ideally true time delay is required for a
wideband system, but there is, as yet, no convenient
technological solution. Whilst phase steering can be
conveniently accomplished in a small, low cost MMIC device,
true time delay approaches to date have either considered
optical delay techniques (complex, lossy and with poor
dynamic range) or electrical techniques (lossy, with limited
maximum delay). True time delay also requires much more
control complexity to give the required accuracy in large
antennas. Hybrid solutions, using true time delay at a sub-array
level, offer a useful compromise for some applications.
However it must be observed that for most radar purposes
phase steering is perfectly satisfactory, even in a wideband
system, as a radar will normally only employ a modest
bandwidth waveform at any instant, the bandwidth generally
being dictated by the desired range resolution. There are
important exceptions, such as very high resolution SAR and
target recognition systems, but compromise engineering
solutions exist even for these cases.
Thus a phase control solution is probably an acceptable
approach in the near to medium term. Wideband phase shifter
designs exist, although they are generally much larger than
narrowband designs- which may be an issue in tightly-packed
arrays.
In the longer term, full digital control at the element level is a
possible approach. For cost reasons this will almost certainly
have to be based on highly integrated devices. In principle, it is
feasible to consider on-chip digital synthesis and down
conversion/digitisation at the element level, where the relative
timings of the devices are controlled to provide beam steering.
Silicon Germanium (SiGe) is a promising technology to
support this approach, although achieving satisfactory dynamic
range is likely to be the limiting factor.
VII. WIDEBAND POWER GENERATION.
RF power generation in radar systems normally needs to be as
efficient as possible- a particularly critical issue in airborne
systems, where cooling is at a premium. High efficiency is
most easily achieved with narrowband designs. The design of
output matching networks for power amplifiers must also take
into account device characteristics. Current Gallium Arsenide
(GaAs) based solid-state amplifiers have a very low output
impedance, of the order 1--20, and this must be transformed in
the matching network to the higher impedance of the antenna
network (normally 500). This conflicts with the requirements
for wideband matching. The advent of Gallium Nitride (GaN)
power amplifiers, with their much higher output impedance,
eases greatly the design of a wideband output matching
network and thus GaN must be seen as a key enabler for
efficient wideband designs.
VIII. ADVANTAGES OF WIDEBAND AND MULTI-BAND
SYSTEMS.
So far we have discussed the enabling technologies for
wideband electronically steered radar systems. Broadly
speaking, the technology for wideband array faces (radiating
elements and array design) is reasonably well advanced, with
designs offering up to 4: I bandwidth for large arrays becoming
available. Phase-based beam steering, an acceptable
compromise for most purposes, is feasible although much
detailed work remains to be done; longer term prospects exist
for true time delay steering, but the emergence of a satisfactory
technology is far from certain. Wideband power devices exist,
although efficiency is a problem; the advent of GaN devices
should significantly improve this situation. Lastly, depending
upon the platform, radomes are likely to be a limiting factor for
wideband operation.
So what are the implications for the system designer? Clearly
there is much scope for such antenna systems to subsume a
wide variety on non-radar functions- electronic warfare,
electronic surveillance and communications. This is a very
broad subject and a very important one. However for reasons
of brevity this paper will only consider wide or multi-band
radar applications.
IEEE Standard Radar-Frequency Letter IJaftcI Nomenclature
AIIIp._,.
aaDd Nomiul SpecHic Jl'nqu.cy ..... '. . . . .r
D_Ia_doD Freq••cyRaaae
....... ITV
.... 2
UHF 300 MHz-l 000 MHz 420 MHz-450 MHz
890 MHz-942 MHz
L 1000 MHz-2oo0 MHz 1215 MHz-1400 MHz
S 2000 MHz-4oo0 MHz 2300 MHz-2500 MHz
2700 MHz-3700 MHz
C 4000 MHz-8oo0 MHz 5250 MHz-5925 MHz
X 8000 MHz-12,ooO MHz 8500 MHz-l 0,680 MHz
12.0 GHz-18 GHz 13.4 GHz-14.0 GHz
Ku
15.7 GHz-17.7 GHz
Figure 2 - lTD Radar Frequency Band Assignments
At present the designer of a radar system must generally, as a
first step, choose the operating band for his design. The current
ITU radar frequency assignments are shown in Figure 2.
The majority of existing airborne radars operate in X-band, a
choice dictated primarily by the need to achieve a reasonably
narrow beamwidth for accurate target location within a
constrained physical aperture. A few, larger systems (mostly
AEW) operate at lower frequencies, whilst some smaller
systems (missiles, UAVs) use higher frequencies.
This predominance of X-band leads to a number of issues.
Firstly, the spectrum is very crowded- there is much scope for
interference, both accidental and deliberate. Secondly,
performance can be significantly affected by atmospheric
effects- attenuation in rain can be very significant, and even in
clear weather long range systems can suffer significant losses
compared to lower frequency systems. Thirdly, whilst higher
frequencies provide narrower beams (for accurate angular
location), the downside of this is that it often takes much longer
to search a defined angular volume- thus radars typically have
to employ multiple scans, which reduces performance and
increases target acquisition time.
To take advantage of wideband technologies, and to align with
current frequency band designations, a multi-band radar is the
obvious approach.
Let us consider a simple notional dual-band design which can
operate from 5GHz up to 10GHz, i.e. in C-band and in X-band.
This system has the same physical antenna aperture which may
be operated in either frequency band; the system power output
is the same in both bands. Broadly speaking, the antenna beam
widths will be doubled in C-band compared to X-band, and the
(I-way) antenna gain reduced by 6dB. At a fixed azimuth scan
rate, this doubles the C-band dwell, which partly compensates
for the reduced gain; the broader C-band (elevation) beam
provides improved height coverage.
Now consider two notional modes of operation for airspace
surveillance. In both cases an alert/confirm strategy is used,
where an initial detection triggers an electronic scan-back to
initiate a track. The modes are:
• An X-band only mode, with a fixed azimuth scan rate and
two elevation bars to provide the required height
coverage.
• A mode with C-band alerting and X-band confirmation.
In this mode, with the same azimuth scan rate, only a
single bar is required to give the equivalent elevation
coverage.
Note that the use of X-band in both cases for tracking will
provide equivalent tracking accuracy. A C-band only solution
would be markedly inferior in this respect.
Such a system has been analysed with the following results:
• In clear air, the C/X band system achieves an 11 %
improvement in tracking range compared to the X-band
only system.
• With moderate rain over a limited intervening extent
«10% of range), the C/X band system has a 15% range
advantage.
• With heavy rain over a limited intervening extent « 10%
of range), the C/X band system has a 21 % range
advantage.
• The search update time for the C/X band system was half
that of the X-band only system.
These results clearly illustrate significant potential advantages
for a dual-band system. The factors behind this are simply that
the system is better able to tolerate common real-world
atmospheric effects, and that the system can be better optimised
to search a required volume.
Other advantages may also be observed. The most obvious is
that such a dual-band system has an advantage over many
jamming systems; the radar designer now has a much wider
range of operating frequencies to draw on, and the jammer
designer has a much wider range of frequencies to try and deal
with. Another, related, advantage is simply improved resistance
to accidental interference.
A wide range of operating frequencies gives the radar designer
increased freedom to choose suitable waveforms to provide
specific range and velocity (Doppler) coverage- particularly
useful in multimode radar.
Observations at widely separated frequencies can be
advantageous for target recognition purposes (although a
greater than 2: 1 span is probably needed to give significant
benefits in this area).
These are just some of the potential military benefits of a
technology which is just beginning to emerge.
IX. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.
This paper has discussed the implications of emerging
technologies for wideband and multi-band AESA-based
airborne radar. Many of these enabling technologies are now
starting to mature; 2: 1 operating bandwidths appear feasible in
the short to medium term, and bandwidths of 4:1 or more
should be achievable in the future.
Systems based on these technologies will offer the radar
designer unparalleled flexibility and the opportunity to
implement radically new radar modes and functions. A simple
example shows that increases in tracking range of between
10% and 20% in a typical scenario can be achieved, and
wideband operation appears to offer many more functional
advantages.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.
The author wishes to thank Selex Sensors and Airborne
Systems Ltd. for their support for this work.
REFERENCES.
[1] "Review ofthe State ofthe Art ofUK AESA Technology and the Future
Challenges Faced". S. Moore, lET International Conference on Radar Systems,
Edinburgh 2007
[2] "CAESAR: Demonstrating AESA Capability Option for Eurofighter Captor
Radar. M. Barclay, U. Pietzschmann, G. Gonzalez, P. Tellini". IET International
Conference on Radar Systems, Edinburgh 2007
[3] "A Low Profile Broadband Phased Array Antenna". B.Munk et.a!., IEEE 0-
7803-7846-6/03 2003
[4] "Radiating Element for Wide Bandwidth Scanned Array Antennas". G.
Byrne,1. McCormick; 4th EMRS DTC Technical Conference, Edinburgh 2007