14
Air Defense Radar Design
Considerations
14.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter discusses some of the key aspects of air defense radar design. Top-
ics covered include:
• Air defense mission parameters and requirements
• Air target threat types:
– Aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), cruise missiles
– Chaff and jamming
• Interceptor capabilities:
– Maximum velocity
– Fly-out range
– Interceptor support requirements
• Desired defended area:
– Search requirements
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– Tracking requirements
– Target features
– Classifier requirements
– Waveform requirements
• Performance evaluation and design validation.
Air defense (AD) radars are fire control radars where the intended target is an
air target, including aircraft, helicopters, UAVs, and cruise missiles. Figure 14.1
illustrates the operation of an AD radar.
An AD radar typically performs the search, acquisition, tracking, target classi-
fication and discrimination, and interceptor support functions. As such and due
to the widely varying characteristics of air targets, each of these functions must
accommodate a wide range of threats. Shipboard AD systems are often referred
to as anti-air warfare (AAW) systems.
For example, most AD radars perform some form of a volume search to ini-
tially detect and acquire targets. In addition, they can be cued by other sensors
(e.g., a handover from another radar). Assuming that the AD radar is appropri-
ately sized for the threats it must operate against, all targets will be detected in
the volume search. As shown in Chapter 1, there is a special form of the radar
range equation for a volume search that is independent of radar operating fre-
quency.
Figure 14.1 Mission of Air Defense Radar
Air Defense Radar Design Considerations 295
Tracking of air targets differs from other types of targets in that these targets
can exhibit many distinct types of flight:
• Altitudes from “on the deck” or about 15 meters to 80,000 feet
• May be manned or unmanned (i.e., pull low and very high-g maneuvers, and
be unpredictable in doing so)
• Straight and level, constant velocity
• Straight and level, linear acceleration
• High-g maneuvers (turns, climbs, dives)
• Near-stationary or hovering
• Very-low altitude, terrain-following
• May employ propellers, jets, and rockets.
Tracking filters, therefore, must operate over many or all of these flight re-
gimes and target dynamics, depending on the role of the particular AD system.
In many cases where many types of targets and associated dynamics must be ac-
commodated, multiple-model tracking filters, such as the interacting multiple-
model (IMM) filter may be appropriate. For slower air targets, or surface targets
(included here for completeness), track-while-scan (TWS) methods can often be
employed.
Target classification and discrimination of air threats during the above phases
of flight is referred to by the term non-cooperative target recognition (NCTR). In
addition to NCTR, some systems attempt to perform identification (ID).
Last, during interceptor support, the radar must provide the interceptor mis-
sile with data for commit or launch, guidance data or target illumination, de-
pending on the type of interceptor being employed by the AD system.
14.2 AIR DEFENSE MISSION PARAMETERS AND
REQUIREMENTS
AD mission parameters vary with the type of threat, for example:
• Threat aircraft in presence of possible friendly aircraft
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• Cruise missile (CM) or anti-radiation missile (ARM) attacks
• Slowly-moving threats, e.g., helicopters or UAVs.
Key attributes for these variations are the target dynamics and range of flight,
the desired radar detection range and search coverage required to maximize de-
fended areas of the AD system. The ranges of parameters are approximately:
• Tactical air defense:
– Range: 10 to 200 km
– Target type: aircraft, CMs, helicopters, UAVs
– Threat range and speed: 10 to 200 km; 50 m/s to 2,000 m/s.
• Strategic air defense:
– Range: 50 to 500 km
– Target type: aircraft, CMs, helicopters, UAVs
– Threat range and speed: 50 to 500 km; 50 m/s to 2,000 m/s.
The AD radars must operate in the above environments, at various slant
ranges, and against air threats that vary in mean radar cross section (RCS) .
These widely varying conditions strongly influence the radar requirements.
14.3 INTERCEPTOR CAPABILITIES AND SUPPORT
REQUIREMENTS
There are basically three categories of interceptors:
• Short-range guns and missiles
• Medium-range missiles
• Long-range missiles.
Some approximate capabilities are:
• Short-range gun
– Speed: mach 3
– Range: 5 to 10 km
• Medium-range missile:
– Speed: mach 3.5
– Range: 50+ km
Air Defense Radar Design Considerations 297
• Long-range missile:
– Speed: mach 4+
– Range: 75+ km.
14.4 DEFENDED AREA
In general, the longer-range AD systems typically provide the largest battlespace
or defended areas (or keep-out zones) since due to their longer ranges and faster
interceptors, by negating the threats earlier in the timeline, a larger defended
“footprint” is afforded by enhancing the keep-out or threat negation region. In
terms of the types of “assets” defended by the different AD systems, short-range
systems like guns provide relatively small coverage, such as for localized per-
sonnel and equipment or ships, whereas a missile can defend against medium-
range aircraft and CMs, and longer-range systems can provide defense of larger
areas, such as a convoy of ships or small cities, against both air and even some
missile threats. The defended area size is driven by the radar, interceptor, or
both, depending on the design balance achieved.
14.5 AIR DEFENSE RADAR REQUIREMENTS
AD radars requirements can be summarized in the following functional areas:
• Typical operating frequency:
– S-band to C-band
• Antenna types:
– Full FOV (FFOV)
– Narrow bandwidth phased arrays
• Search types:
– Volume search
– Autonomous horizon fence
– Cued search (handovers from other surface or airborne sensors)
• Tracking capability:
– Track manned and unmanned
– Tracking rates: medium, low (straight and level)
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– Accuracy: Sufficient to support weapon requirements
– Maneuver-tracking capability
• Waveform characteristics:
– Single and multiple-pulse (coherent integration)
– Pulse-Doppler
– Search: Narrow bandwidth
– Track: Medium bandwidth.
Typical AD parameters are provided in Table 14.1.
Table 14.1 AD Radar Characteristics
Radar Parameter Radar Attribute
Operating frequency S-band, C-band
Antenna type FFOV
Search type Volume, autonomous horizon fence
Tracking Track rate: variable
Waveform characteristics LFM: various bandwidths
14.6 PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AND DESIGN
VALIDATION
Evaluation of AD radar performance can be performed at many levels of fidelity,
including:
• Back-of-the-envelope analysis:
– Radar range equation, Sorensen-type tracking analysis
• Desktop computer-aided analysis:
– MATLAB or similar
– Static and dynamic scenarios
– Closed-form target fluctuation models (e.g., Swerling, log-normal)
– Interceptor fly-out curves or equivalent
– Single-run and Monte Carlo analyses
Air Defense Radar Design Considerations 299
• High-fidelity simulation:
– Detailed dynamic scenarios
– Accurate target scattering models and dynamics
– Waveforms and signal processing
– Tracking filter and data association algorithms
– Detailed feature modeling and classifier algorithms
– Interceptor dynamics and fly-out models:
Accelerations and burn-out velocities
Seeker models
• Real-time simulation:
– Digital and/or hardware-in-the-loop
– Actual real-time mission software
– Monte Carlo trials
– High-fidelity target simulation
Radio frequency scattering models
Data recording and reduction tools.
These performance assessments support radar systems analyses and design
efforts during several phases of development, integration, and test, including:
• Radar architecture trade studies
• Radar system design trade-offs
• Subsystem requirements allocations:
– Hardware
– Software
– Interfaces
• Test vector generation for hardware and software design support
• Test plan and procedure development.
14.7 REFERENCES
[1] J. V. Candy, Signal Processing—The Modern Approach, McGraw-Hill, 1989
[2] S. Haykin & A. Steinhardt, Adaptive Radar Detection and Estimation, Wiley, 1992
[3] S. Haykin, Adaptive Radar Signal Processing, Wiley-Interscience, 2006
300 Chapter 14
[4] S. Kay, Modern Spectral Estimation: Theory and Application, Prentice-Hall, 1999
[5] D. Manolakis, Statistical and Adaptive Signal Processing, Artech House, 2005
[6] S. L. Marple, Digital Spectral Analysis with Applications, Prentice-Hall, 1987
[7] R. A. Monzingo & T. M. Miller, Introduction to Adaptive Arrays, SciTech, 2003
[8] R. Nitzberg, Radar Signal Processing and Adaptive Systems, 2nd Edition, Artech House,
1999
[9] A. Oppenheim & R. Shafer, Digital Signal Processing, Prentice-Hall, 1975
[10] A. Papoulis, Probability, Random Variables, and Stochastic Processes, McGraw-Hill,
1965
[11] A. Papoulis, Signal Analysis, McGraw-Hill, 1977
[12] H. Van Trees, Detection, Estimation and Modulation Theory, Part 1, Wiley-Interscience,
2001
[13] Y. Bar-Shalom, Multitarget-Multisensor Tracking: Principles and Techniques, YBS, 1995
[14] Y. Bar-Shalom, Multitarget/Multisensor Tracking: Applications and Advances, Artech
House, 2000
[15] S. Blackman & R. Popoli, Design and Analysis of Modern Tracking Systems, Artech
House, 1999
[16] R. Duda, et al., Pattern Classification, 2nd Edition, Wiley-Interscience, 2000
[17] K. Fukunaga, Introduction to Statistical Pattern Recognition, 2nd Edition, Academic
Press, 1990
[18] S. Theodoridis & K. Koutroumbas, Pattern Recognition, 2nd Edition, Academic Press,
2003
