Bistatic Radar with Thinned Receiving Phased Array for Airports Surveillance
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BISTATIC RADAR WITH THINNED RECEIVED PHASED ARRAY M. Cherniakov University of Birmingham Edgbaston, B15 2TT, UK [email protected] Abstract The presented concept of bistatic radar can have significant benefit for airport surveillance. It may be described as a bistatic semi-active radar which utilizes one of the available airport area surveillance radars as the transmitter and a receiving only, slave radar. The passive radar contains an electronically scanned antenna phased array which is essentially thinned. The grating lobes are suppressed in this system by the transmitting radar acting as a space filter. At the conceptual level of the paper the advantages and limitations of the proposed radar architecture are considered. 1 Introduction The primary goal of this conceptual paper is to introduce the topology and basic performance analysis of bistatic radar (BR) with essentially different transmitting and receiving antennas. This BR can be described as bistatic semi-active radar that utilize as the illuminator (transmitter) one of the available surveillance radars (master radar - MR) and a passive, receiving only, radar (slave radar - SR). Presumably MR and SR are operating independently, but if expedient or necessary the obtained data could be collected at one position for further data or information fusion. In the SR radar, a phased array is proposed which provides essentially better angle resolution (order or more) in comparison with the master radar within a given sector. 360 0 observation Mechanical scanning MR Synchronization channel :0 SR observation Phased array antenna Electronic scanning Figure 1: System topology An example of possible system topology is shown in Figure 1. In the system we assume presumably mechanical scanning in the azimuth MR antenna, with circular or sector coverage and a relatively broad beam which results in a low angle resolution. In contrast, SR has electronically scanning phased array antenna with sector coverage and an essentially narrower beam in comparison with the MR antenna. During one MR antenna scan, the sector of SR coverage is illuminated over a significant time period TD, and MR and SR could act in a bistatic radar mode. We assume at this stage that BR has a quasi-monostatic configuration, i.e. the bistatic angle is small enough to avoid a pulse-chasing problem. It will be shown that for the considered configuration the SR array can be essentially thinned. Instead of the traditional 0.5-0.7 (wavelength) spacing between the array radiators, it can be enlarged up to 0.5-0.7 D, where D is the MR antenna effective aperture length in azimuth. The penalty for this technical advantage is a reduction in the power budget which will be analyzed later in the paper. The key factor for the possible reduction in the number of antenna elements is the interaction of the relatively broadbeam transmitting antenna and the narrowbeam receiving phased array. The transmitting antenna pattern acts as the space filter for the grating lobes rejection (Figure 2). MR antenna SR antenna Main beams SR antenna grating lobes Figure 2: Combination of the transmitting and receiving antennas patterns Potentially the passive radar has the millirad resolution. The system can be used for many applications where the maximal operational range of the slave radar can be less than the operational range of the active radar, but where the enhanced angle resolution is the key factor, i.e. airfield monitoring (cars, pedestrians, left luggage, etc), landing aircrafts, etc; where the array is positioned on the airport roof (Figure 3). MR SR Figure 3: Airport layout example [6] The proposed system has a passive nature and does not require an appropriate spectrum allocation that makes its‘ application specifically attractive in areas sensitive to an introduction of new active sensors (airports as a typical example). For instance in an airfield monitoring scenario, high-resolution monitoring information can be obtained by the data fusion from all kind of sensors: optical, infrared, laser, MM wave, etc. In spite of the range of systems used, there are still grey spots in the monitoring area. Potentially this could lead to a disaster similar to the Concorde crash in France, due to a small metal object present on the runway; or the collision between Singapore Airline B-747 and a civil engineering machine at an airport in Taiwan. 2 Antenna elements spacing A comprehensive introduction to radar with phased arrays is presented in [1]. The traditional radar contains Transmitting/Receiving antenna(s). If two antennas are used and they are significantly separated spatially, the system is referred to as bistatic radar [2]. In general in a bistatic system, transmitting and receiving antennas can be different in terms of their patterns and steering approaches. One of the antennas could be, for example, mechanically scanning when another could be an electronically steering phased array. Assume a scenario where a transmitting antenna is mechanically rotated over 360 0 with an antenna beamwidth TR in the azimuth plane. Only this plane is considered here, as it is of specific interest in this paper. The approximate relationship between an antenna aperture size œ DTR , and TR in radians is: TR ≈ /D TR . Commonly the size of mechanically rotated radar antennas is less than ~ 8-10 m [4], which limits the minimum antenna beamwidth. It should also be mentioned here that the antennas‘ size critically influences the system cost. Figure 4 contains an approximate graph of antennas beamwidth MIN in degrees, for two specific wavelengths 0.03 and 0.03 m vs antenna size in meters œ DTR . Mechanically Phased scanning antennas arrays N deg number of elements λ=0.3 3 5.0 10 λ=0.03 0.5 10 2 0.05 10 1 λ=0.03 N λ=0.3 0.3 3.0 30 D [m] Figure 4: Beamwidth - and radiating elements number œ N vs antenna size - D Thus for the frequency bands traditionally occupied by surveillance radars, the best practically achievable beamwidth (8 m antenna) is between 0.2 (X-band) and 2 degrees (L-band). For example, at a distance of 5 km, this provides a cross range linear resolution between ~15 and ~150 m respectively. If a narrower beam is needed for scanning antennas, phased array technology could be used. In this case the antenna itself is not mechanically rotated, but the beam is controlled electronically. Potential advantages of phased array technology are known. Here we will highlight the major drawbacks: high cost and a restriction to approximately ±60 0 scanning angle. Actually, more than one flat array could cover 360 0, but this further affects the system cost. In the first approximation the phased array cost is proportional to the number of the antenna elements - N and the number of appropriate channels in an array. For an array scanning in one plane over ±60 0: N ≈ 1.4D/ . This number could be reduced by not using all of the elements for large arrays ( N>100). In practice, a thinned array could have 2-4 + times element reduction in 2-D arrays [4]. Nevertheless, at this stage we consider 1.4D/ as the estimate. The number of elements in a phased array N vs D is also shown in Figure 4. For example at X band it would be N~200 for D~3 m (beamwidth M~0.5 0) and N ~2000 for D~30m (beamwidth M~0.05 0). An antenna with 0 M~0.05 at a distance of 5 km provides an excellent linear resolution, )l ≈ 5m. Not considering here specific technical problems of antennas with a so narrow beam design, we will focus attention on the high cost of such arrays. At L band, to achieve 0.05 0 resolutions, the antenna should have a length of about 300 m. Even if the cost of the antenna module at this frequency is less than for X band, a maintenance construction cost could be higher. Another peculiarity of such large size antennas array is the aperture - range resolution relationship. When the aperture becomes of an order or bigger than the range resolution the antenna control technique and its structure requires some specific modification. First of all the phase shifter or their baseband equivalent, in the case of digital array, should be replaced by appropriate delay lines [3]. In point of fact, radars with an extremely large array and high range resolution have already been considered in the literature and are known as —radio-camera“ [5]. We should also take into account one further technical problem, specifically if analogue phased array is used, that is the accuracy of the elements phasing. Narrowbeam array is traditionally associated with a large number of antenna elements and all non-ideality in a beamforming circuits could be averaged. In out case this statistical approach cannot be directly applied and an individual components precision could be taken into account. For the systems discussed so far, it is difficult to develop cost affordable scanning antennas with a very high angle resolution and specifically at relatively low frequency bands. For mechanically scanning antennas, this is first of all due to the limitations of the mechanical system; and for the phased array it is due to the quickly increasing cost/angular resolution dependence. On the other hand, low frequency bands are preferable in many cases due to a better power budget and weather condition robustness, higher target detectability, less shadow area, etc. 3 Thinned array for the BR The spacing s between antenna elements specifies the array pattern‘s grating lobes. To avoid ambiguity θ the distance between these lobes should be more than a scanning angle 0 and for the broad scanning array it is s ~ 0.5 Q - 0.7 Q.