Presented By:

Muhammad Umer Khan

Mohsin Hassan

Birds acts as moving clutter in the radar
operational area.

The reflectivity of birds is prominent in case
when they are flying in folks.

Due to their motion they can be sometimes
regarded as slow moving targets.



Birds tracks cause problems for sea and land-
based radar users.
There could be up to 10
5
to 10
6
birds flying in
the 50km area of a radar.
In naval or coastal radar systems it is usually
also a requirement to form tracks on moving
ships and boats of all descriptions.
Some of which can move at similar speeds to
birds.
Birds act as side effect for most of the sensitive
radars.
Radar cross section is different for different size of
birds.
Most reflectivity of a bird depends upon its 65% of
its mass consisting on water.
For radar cross section, bird can be regarded as
the sphere of water.
Radar cross section varies with circumference.
Physical cross section varies with wave length.

Most of the birds and wavelengths have
scattering in resonance region.
Cross section of a bird could vary up to 5.4dB
from optical cross section.
Except for very large birds the cross sections
are small compared with those of aircraft, ships
or missiles.
When birds are in flocks there may be multiple
birds within a resolution cell of the radar.
Different birds have different characteristics of
flying.
These depends upon mass, size, shape, flying
altitude and many others.


The flying speed of the birds vary from few
m/s to 43m/s.
Speed of the birds vary with their other
characteristics.
The broad trend is for speed to increase with
size, but there are also many exceptions.
Birds with large wings and relatively low
weight, such as gulls, are very maneuverable
but generally slow.
On the other hand birds with a high wing
loading, such as ducks and geese, are less
maneuverable but can maintain good straight
line speed.
On migration, or on transit from roosting to
feeding areas, birds tend to fly faster and with
more constant course.
These effect of wind on flying characteristics of
birds seem complicated.
It cannot be predicted simply adding the wind
speed to the bird speed measured with zero
wind.
Around Europe the vast majority of migrating
buds fly below 2000m.
Birds on transoceanic migrations often fly up to
6000m.
The flocks of swans and geese are also
observed at altitudes up to 9000m.
The highest recorded bird is a vulture at
11,300m.

In this section we will observe the data from
several recordings of radars at sea measured
through a ship borne surveillance radar.

The data recorded is from 1993 to 1996.

Figure shows tracks attributable to birds
recorded during a 40 minute period off the
Welsh coast from a ship-board S-band radar
operating in very calm conditions.

The associated processing system
automatically formed tracks from coherent
sequences.

The bird tracks were an unwelcome source
of clutter in the picture.

Altogether 400 tracks attributable to birds
were recorded during a 40 minute period

It can be seen that there are two distinct sets.

The fairly dense set of tracks in an annular cluster
close to the ship (see inset picture) is
characterized by low speeds (5m/s to 10m/s) and
is attributable to birds on local foraging flights.

The tracks at longer ranges have speeds in the
range 15m/s to 25m/s and are due to birds
making more direct flights across the surveillance
area.
It was deduced that these tracks had elevations
variously between 500m and 2000m.
At the ranges involved it was likely that the tracks
originated from flocks rather than individual
birds.
Example 2
The bird tracks shown in figure were
recorded in January at the western end
of the English Channel.

The data originated from an S-band
surveillance radar and the radar was
employing an MTI filter.

The sea conditions were fairly rough
(sea state 4-5) with a brisk south-
westerly wind.
When the effects of ship motion are
removed from the data, the distribution
of the ground speeds of the tracks is as
shown in the upper part of figure, with a
mean of 29m/s and a maximum of
37m/s.

Several hours later, when the wind was a
little stronger,(mean surface speed
14m/s) a further track recording was
made, with an L-band radar on board.

The speed distribution from this
recording is shown in the lower part of
figure.
These tracks bad an average speed of
27m/s and a
maximum of 42m/s.

Example 3
This third example is a recording made
in the North Sea.
The picture, of the unprocessed plots
received by an L-band radar within
30km of the ship in a 50 minute period
is shown:
Analysis indicates that approximately
300 plots per scan are attributable to
birds.
The probability of detection of
individual birds is often well below 1
and the number of birds present and
giving rise to plots is probably of the
order 500 to 600.
In this scenario, the number of plots per
scan due to birds considerably exceeded
the number of plots due to objects of
interest.

Some of the plot that were analyzed by
automatic tracking formation.
A plot of the distribution of the course
and speed of these birds is shown in the
upper figure.
An other similar analysis of tracks
recorded from an S-band radar over an
overlapping but slightly different
time span is shown below.
There were two distinct populations of
birds flying in different directions, with
those going north east flying faster than
those flying north west.

Depending on the operational aims of the radar
system, no single technique or discriminate is
likely to be entirely successful at eliminating birds
from the track picture.
Discrimination against bird tracks might be
attempted at various points in the radar processing
chain, for example:
At the radar signal processing stage, via the use of
pulse Doppler, MTI or MTD techniques.
at the plot formation stage, via the observed signal
strength or frequency of Doppler signal.
at the track formation stage, via the track-averaged
plot strength and apparent track speed and height.

From the above described data it can be observed
that:
the kinetic characteristics of birds are often similar
to those of some man-made vehicles.
There may be sufficient birds with ground speeds
above the MTI threshold to give rise to a
significant number of tracks.
Bird tracks can form a substantial proportion of the
track surveillance radar picture.
If automatic track initiation and processing is
employed then we have to ensure that the
processing can cope with high numbers of birds
track.