Sunday, April 15, 2012

What is a RADAR?


A radar in it’s simplest form is a parabolic dish that uses pulses of radio waves to locate objects. These include but are not limited to ships, terrain, aircraft, weather formations and missiles.
To give a better understanding of what a radar is, some of my friends decided to make an educational radar to help teach the future batches of Avionic students and practically show them it’s functionality.
As they put it, the Educational Radar is an ideal learning tool to understand the concept and working of Radar technology. It detects the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving & fixed objects.


A few of it’s applications are as follows.
  • Weather forecasting
  • Air traffic control


BASIC COMPONENTS

  • A transmitter that generates the radio signal with an oscillator such as a klystron or magnetron  and controls its duration by a modulator.
  • A waveguide that links the transmitter and the antenna.
  • A duplexer that serves as a switch between the antenna and the transmitter or the receiver for the signal.
  • A receiver. Knowing the shape of the desired received signal (a pulse), an optimal receiver can be designed using a matched filter.
  • An electronic section that controls all those devices and the antenna to perform the radar scan ordered by a software.



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