ATI's Fundamentals of Radar Technology course

A three-day course covering the basics of radar, taught in a manner for true understanding of the fundamentals, even for the complete newcomer. Covered are electromagnetic waves, frequency bands, the natural phenomena of scattering and propagation, radar performance calculations and other tools used in radar work, and a "walk through" the four principal subsystems - the transmitter, the antenna, the receiver and signal processor, and the control and interface apparatus - covering in each the underlying principle and componentry. A few simple exercises reinforce the student's understanding. Both surface-based and airborne radars are addressed.

Course Outline:

• • The basic nature of radar and its applications, military and civil
  • Radiative physics (an exercise); the radar range equation; the statistical nature of detection
    
  • Electromagnetic waves, constituent fields and vector representation
    
  • Radar "timing", general nature, block diagrams, typical characteristics
  • Scattering: Rayleigh point scattering; target fluctuation models; the nature of clutter
    
  • Propagation: Earth surface multipath; atmospheric refraction and "ducting"; atmospheric attenuation
    
  • Other tools: the decibel, etc. (a dB exercise)
  • An example radar and performance calculations, with variations
  • Overview: the role, general nature and challenges of each
    
  • The Transmitter, basics of power conversion: power supplies, modulators, rf devices (tubes, solid state)
    
  • The Antenna: basic principle; microwave optics and pattern formation, weighting, sidelobe concerns, sum and difference patterns; introduction to phased arrays
  • Receiver: preamplification, conversion, heterodyne operation "image" frequencies and double conversion
    
  • Signal processing: pulse compression
    
  • Signal processing: Doppler-sensitive processing
    
  • Airborne radar - the absolute necessity of Doppler processing
  • Automatic detection and constant-false-alarm-rate (CFAR) techniques of threshold control
    
  • Automatic tracking: exponential track filters
    
  • Multi-radar fusion, briefly
    
  • Course review, discussion, current topics and community activity