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Radar design

Characteristics and design effects in radar systems

Today radar is entering many more new domains of application than the traditional ones of military and civil traffic control, such as weather and climate research, agriculture, water surface pollution,  automotive and security systems. Actually too large a diversity of applications to list and discuss all of them.

The course aims at providing understanding on the operation of the various subsystems and how each of them affects the behaviour of the integrated system. You will also learn how the various parameters of radar and its design impact the performance in terms of detection range, accuracies, robustness, etc.

The thread in the course is the case study of the design of a real radar system, in which all the various topics will be discussed in a proper context. Besides the theoretical parts and case studies, there are demonstrations of (small) operating radar systems and excursions to measurement set-ups of radars or antennas.

Insight into systems and the effects of radar design

The course:

  • Offers the basic principles of radar
  • Discusses the function blocks of radar systems
  • Gives insight in the connection between physical, technological and scientific aspects affecting the expected properties of radar systems
  • Describes the physical phenomena affecting the propagation and reflection of radio waves
  • Discusses the detection process of radar systems; the effective radar cross section of objects and its scintillation, the effect on the detection probabilities and possibilities for improvement
  • Handles the more technological issues, such as transmitters, receivers, antennas, signal processing and radars with active and passive phased array antennas
  • Elaborates on the principles of imaging radar in remote sensing (Synthetic Aperture Radar – SAR, detecting with SAR and Inverse SAR)
     

Intended for
Engineers (academics or higher professional education) involved in the purchase, use or design of radar on system level.

The course will be presented in English.

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“All topics have been dealt with in a relatively high pace. In-depth, very complete. The lessons are of a good level, very interesting.”
Susan Varenbrink (Ministerie van Defensie)
“An in-depth course that handles the many subjects sufficiently. Derivations of formulas are not shunned. A very complete course on radar design.”
Employee TNO
“Good and very approachable teachers from different disciplines. I'm glad to have followed the course, I've learned a lot!”
Employee Koninklijk Instituut voor de Marine
“Having worked on radar technology for two years, but never having followed a radar course before, this course filled in the gaps for me. The course provided a good foundation on various aspects of a radar system and focused on issues related to radar signal processing. Professor van Genderen was very knowledgeable and eager to help us learn.”
Medewerker van TNO (incompany)
“I enjoyed the course. I valued the most the hands-on experience of the lecturer. This was not a signal processing course but an field-experience transfer course. I liked it.”
Mario Coutino (TNO, incompany)
  • Information
    Language
    		 The program will be taught in English.
  • Program

    Day 1

    • Basic radar block diagram; frequency windows. How to measure distance.
    • Radar Range Equation and Doppler effect
    • Radar Cross Section
    • Detection against a noise background
    • Integration (coherent, non-coherent)

    Day 2

    • Surface clutter  (RCS properties, land + sea)
    • Precipitation clutter (RCS propties of rain, snow, fog; attenuation)
    • Angel clutter (+ how to discard)
    • Propagation effects (refraction, diffraction, multipath)
    • Antenna Theory and Technology
    • Monopulse antennas; tracking radar
    Day 3
    • Transmitters
    • Receivers
    • FMCW
    • Demo's with in-class radar
    • Time to Frequency domain transform
    • Pulse compression
    • System level noise
    Day 4
    • Classification of objects
    • Precision
    • ESA-radar
    • Workshop
    • Track while scan
    Day 5
    • Advanced processing in short range radar
    • System discussion: Imaging security radar
    • System discussion: Automotive radar
    • Lab exercise: small FMCW radar
    • System discussion: Coastal surveillance radar
    Day 6
    • SAR Systems
    • Spaceborne SAR
    • Sensing with SAR
  • Reviews
    This course is assessed with a 8.3
    “All topics have been dealt with in a relatively high pace. In-depth, very complete. The lessons are of a good level, very interesting.”
    Susan Varenbrink (Ministerie van Defensie)
    “An in-depth course that handles the many subjects sufficiently. Derivations of formulas are not shunned. A very complete course on radar design.”
    Employee TNO
    “Good and very approachable teachers from different disciplines. I'm glad to have followed the course, I've learned a lot!”
    Employee Koninklijk Instituut voor de Marine
    “Having worked on radar technology for two years, but never having followed a radar course before, this course filled in the gaps for me. The course provided a good foundation on various aspects of a radar system and focused on issues related to radar signal processing. Professor van Genderen was very knowledgeable and eager to help us learn.”
    Medewerker van TNO (incompany)
    “I enjoyed the course. I valued the most the hands-on experience of the lecturer. This was not a signal processing course but an field-experience transfer course. I liked it.”
    Mario Coutino (TNO, incompany)