Title:
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Beamwidth reduction for HF radars
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To obtain adequately narrow beams, high frequency radars
(HF) commonly employ long receiving arrays since they must be
large in comparison with the transmission wavelengths. In
such radars the overall system beamwidth can be reduced for a
given size of the receiving array, by transmitting signals
sequentially from a small number of sector coverage antennas,
suitably positioned relative to the array. A comprehensive
study of this technique applied to the frequency modulated
continuous wave radars (FMCW) is presented, and the bearing-
Doppler ambiguities arising from the use of sequential
transmission have been investigated. The practical usefulness
of the technique has been verified experimentally by measuring
the overall system beam patterns both before and after the
application of a dual transmission scheme. The experimental
procedure required an active transponder capable of simulating
a target of large echoing area, a special beam forming network
capable of slewing the receiving beam in small steps, and a
dual transmission switching unit. The design and development
of these items of test equipment are discussed. Radar signal
processing using the double Fourier transformation with
subsequent phase correction has been proposed, and the recorded
experimental data was processed according to these techniques.
The measured beam patterns have been presented for single and
dual transmission schemes. In addition to the beam narrowing
studies a family of slow rise of sensitivity sequences (SRS)
have been developed which could improve FMCW radar operation
in a monostatic mode, also a new and compact shaping and
switching signal generator has been designed and developed.
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