AV-475

RADAR SYSTEMS
Lecture No 04
Radar Range Equation

Text Book : Principles of Modern Radar Vol. I: Basic Principles by M. A. Richards, J.

A. Scheer, W. A. Holm, (2010); Sections 2.1 – 2.6

Number of Slides: 22

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In the last lecture
• Basic concepts revised
• Physics of EM waves
• Interaction of EM waves with matter
• Diffraction
• Refraction
• Reflection
• Attenuation
• Probability Density Function

2
In this lecture
• Radar range equation

• The equation the radar system designer or analyst uses

to compute the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) is the
radar range equation (RRE).

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 Power density of isotropic antenna
•  Suppose the peak power transmitted by radar is . For
isotropic antenna, the power density at a range is

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Antenna Gain

• Radiation intensity is power density over sphere (watt/steradian)

• Gain is radiation intensity over that of an isotropic source
• The narrower is the beam, the larger is the radar range given the
same transmitted power
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 Power density of directional antenna
•  For directional antenna, the power density at range
becomes

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 Radar Cross Section (RCS),
•  is the property of a scattering object or target.

  = 𝑃𝑡
𝑄 𝑖 2
4𝜋𝑅  𝜎

 𝑃𝑡  𝑃refl =𝜎 𝑄𝑖
Radar

  𝑃refl 𝜎 𝑄𝑖 𝜎 𝑃𝑡 𝐺 𝑡
𝑄𝑟 = 2
= 2
=
4𝜋 𝑅 4𝜋𝑅 ( 4 𝜋 )2 𝑅 4

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Received power at the target
•  The radar receiving antenna “gathers” the amount of
power received depending upon effective antenna area, .
Hence

• It is customary to replace with receive antenna gain ,

which is related as

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Received power at the target
•  Hence

• For monostatic radars, .

• For bistatic radar,

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Example
•  Consider an X-band radar (10 GHz) with peak transmitted
power of 1 kW and antenna gain of 26000 (pencil beam
antenna). Suppose an echo is received from an aircraft
with an RCS of 100 m2 at a range of 10 km. Find the
received power.
• Solution:
We have

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Receive thermal noise
•  As discussed in last lecture, receiver thermal noise always
exist. Its power is

where
Boltzmann’s constant ( W-sec/K),
290 K,
noise figure of the receiver part
instantaneous receiver bandwidth
(measured as half-power bandwidth (HPBW))

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SNR and radar range equation
•  As a parameter, SNR is more important than the received
power because how much is the target signal detectable in
the inevitable noise will make radar detect a target.

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Pulse integration
• We have opportunities to sum-up multiple echoes from a
single target to increase the SNR.
• This is called pulse integration.
• There are two types of pulse integration:
1. Coherent integration
2. Non-coherent integration

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Coherent Integration
•  Consider pulses .
• Then coherently integrated signal is

• Coherent integration is possible when all the received

signal from target are aligned i.e. their phases are known.
• But phases change with Doppler shift and oscillator’s
imperfections at the receiver.
• Hence, coherent integration is limited to the time over
which signal does not change substantially.

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Non-coherent integration
•  It does not keep track of the phase.

• Coherent integration increases SNR by times.

• Non-coherent integration increases SNR by less than

times.

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In MATLAB (1/2)
• Example of non-coherent integration:

x = repmat(sin(2*pi*(0:99)'/100),1,10)+0.1*randn(100,10);
y = pulsint(x);
subplot(211), plot(abs(x(:,1)));
axis([0 100 0 4])
ylabel('Magnitude');
title('First Pulse');
subplot(212), plot(abs(y));
ylabel('Magnitude');
title('Integrated Pulse');

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In MATLAB (2/2)

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Radar range equation after integration
•  After coherent integration, the radar range equation
becomes:

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Summary
• Radar range equation is developed considering
• Target’s range
• Power densities
• Transmitted power
• Antenna gains
• Receiver thermal noise
• Pulse integration

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Next lecture
• Continue with developing the radar range equation
further

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