Lecture 7–Radar

ECE 197SA – Systems Appreciation

Air Traffic Control

§  Radar has broad application in daily life
Ÿ  Sensing of object locations
Ÿ  Sensing of object speed
Ÿ  Sensing of object properties
§  Today’s lecture:
Ÿ  Air traffic control
»  Very large application of ECE
technologies
Ÿ  Radar
»  Basics of radar systems
»  System design for air traffic control
Ÿ  Radar for speed measurement

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 2

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 Air Traffic
§  Air travel important mode of transportation
Ÿ  13 million commercial flights per year
Ÿ  3 billion passengers between 2002 and 2006
Ÿ  Fatal accident rate only 0.023 per 100,000 flights

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 3

Daily Flight Activity

§  Over 87,000 flights per day
Ÿ  Commercial flights: 28,537
Ÿ  General aviation flights: 27,178
Ÿ  Air taxi flights: 24,548
Ÿ  Military flights: 5,260
Ÿ  Air cargo flights: 2,148
Ÿ  On average: 5,000 planes in the skies
Ÿ  From: http://sos.noaa.gov/Datasets/dataset.php?id=44#
http://www.natca.org/

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 4

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 Air Traffic Control
§  Coordination of air space critical
Ÿ  Planes are very restricted in their movements
Ÿ  Small problems can lead to large accidents
§  Traffic control requires complete picture of all planes
Ÿ  Central coordination by ATC
Ÿ  Instructions radioed to
pilots
§  Necessary information:
Ÿ  Location
Ÿ  Altitude
Ÿ  Heading
Ÿ  Speed
Ÿ  Other
»  Destination
»  Type of aircraft
»  …
© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 5

Flight Tracking
§  All commercial flights in the U.S. can be tracked
Ÿ  Example (flights to/from Newark (EWR)):

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 Flight Tracking
§  All commercial flights in the U.S. can be tracked
Ÿ  Example (flights to/from Newark (EWR)):

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 7

Location Problem
§  How to determine where something is located?
Ÿ  General systems problem with many uses
§  Example scenarios:
Ÿ  Air traffic control
Ÿ  Warfare (e.g., missiles)
Ÿ  Weather (e.g., severe weather)
Ÿ  Automotive traffic (e.g., adaptive cruise control)

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 8

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 Location Problem
§  How would you design system to locate object?
Ÿ  Locate in 3 dimensions
Ÿ  Use any technology you like
Ÿ  What accuracy can you achieve?

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 9

Principles of Radar
§  RAdio Detection And Ranging (RADAR)
Ÿ  Radar transmits short pulse of
radio signal
»  Typically 1–60GHz
Ÿ  Signal reflects/scatters off object
Ÿ  Reflected signal travels back to radar
Ÿ  Round-trip time proportional to
distance of object
»  Pulse propagates at speed of light
§  Radar needs to switch from
sending to receiving
Ÿ  No simultaneous send and receive
§  Tradeoff
Ÿ  Longer pulses easier to detect
Ÿ  Shorter pulses lower minimum range

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 10

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 Radar Frequency Bands

From wikipedia.com
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Ranging with Radar

§  How can the radar calculate distance d?

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 Ranging with Radar
§  How can the radar calculate distance d?

§  Observations:
Ÿ  Radar pulse travels twice the distance d during one round-
trip time t
Ÿ  Propagation speed of pulse is c≈300,000km/s
c ⋅t
§  Distance d=
2
§  Example: pulse returns after t=25µs
Ÿ  Distance d = 3⋅108m/s ⋅ 2.5 ⋅10-5s / 2 = 3.75 km
§  How to determine bearing?
© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 13

Air Traffic Control Radar

§  Primary Surveillance Radar (PSR)
Ÿ  Determines distance of planes from reflection echo
Ÿ  Determines bearing from its rotation at time of transmission
Ÿ  Cannot determine altitude of plane
§  Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR)
Ÿ  Triggers airplane
transponder
Ÿ  Receives messages from
airplane transponder
with altitude information
§  SSR similar to IFF
Ÿ  “Identification friend
or foe”
Ÿ  Used by military to
authenticate airplanes

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 14

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 Air Traffic Control
§  Hierarchy of controlling entities
§  Air traffic control
tower (ATCT)
Ÿ  Local control,
departures,
ground control
§  Terminal Radar
Approach Control
(TRACON)
Ÿ  Near airport(s)
§  Air Route Traffic
Control Center
(ARTCC)
Ÿ  Regional control

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 15

Global Positioning System

§  Technical details next lecture
§  Planes can determine their own location
Ÿ  Planes can share information if they choose
§  Recent legislation
Ÿ  Update air traffic control system with GPS

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 16

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 Avoiding Radar

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Avoiding Radar
§  Mechanical countermeasures
Ÿ  Chaff: metal-coated glass fibers
§  Electronic countermeasures
Ÿ  Generation of fake/noisy/etc radar responses

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 18

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 Speed Measurement with Radar
§  … and now for something completely different
Ÿ  Determining speed with radar (“radar gun”)
§  Doppler effect can be used to
determine speed
Ÿ  Reflection of approaching object
increases frequency of pulse
Ÿ  Frequency increase proportional
to relative speed
Ft

Fr

Ÿ  Superposition of Ft and Fr leads to “beat frequency” Fd

§  Speed v of object: Ft Fd
Fd ≈ 2v or v ≈ c
c 2 Ft
© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 19

Superposition of Sine Waves

§  Example:
Ÿ  Original wave: sin(10x)

Ÿ  Reflected wave: sin(10.5x)

Ÿ  Superposition of waves: sin(10x)+sin(10.5x)

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 20

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 Experiment
§  Continuous wave Doppler radar Object
Circulator creating
10dB Directional (Isolation of power Horn Doppler Shift
Gunn Coupler from 1 to 3) Antenna
Diode
2
1
DC

6.5V
3
Local Osc. Reflected Signal fed back from
Osc. Fr antenna Movement
Ft

Beat Osc.
Speaker
Fd
Pre-
amplifier

Ÿ  Beat frequency Fd on speaker

§  Beat frequency in audible range
Ÿ  Approximately 9 GHz radar signal
Ÿ  Assume 2m/s of object movement:
Ft 9 ⋅109 Hz
Fd ≈ 2v = 2 ⋅ 2m / s ⋅ = 120Hz
c 3 ⋅108 m / s
© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 21

Courses in ECE Curriculum

§  ECE 333 – Fields and Waves
§  ECE 584 – Microwave Engineering I
§  ECE 585 – Microwave Engineering II
§  ECE 606 – Electro-Magnetic Field Theory
§  ECE 686 – Intro Radar Systems
§  ECE 687 – Antenna Theory & Design

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 22

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 Upcoming…
§  Global Positioning System
§  Moodle quiz

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Interesting Links
§  Air traffic control maps
Ÿ  http://flightaware.com/live/
Ÿ  http://travel.flightexplorer.com/
§  Live air traffic control audio
Ÿ  http://www.liveatc.net/

© 2010-14 Tilman Wolf 24

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