SCANTER 4000/4100: A MULTI PURPOSE SURVEILLANCE RADAR

A.C.K. Thomsen*, A. 0stergaard*, o. Marqversen*, C.T. Moller-Dundborg*, L.J. Jensen*,

R.D. Rohde* and P. Leth-Espensen*

*Terma A1S, Hovmarken 4, DK-8520, Denmark, [email protected]

Keywords: Surveillance radar, clutter suppression, time-

sidelobes, calibration topology, artificial lens. The operational requirements for the SCANTER 4000/4100
radar are described in terms of coverage regions (near to far)
Abstract with stated probabilities of detection and false alarm under
given weather conditions, e.g. sea states and precipitation
This paper presents the background for and the main features intensities and velocity distributions. Targets were defined in
of the multi purpose SCANTER 4000 and SCANTER 4100 terms of commercial aircraft, fighter aircraft (small in terms
surveillance radar systems, recently being developed at Terma of RCS), large vessels and RIBs (Rigid-Inflatable Boat). Also
A/S for air and sea surveillance. The SCANTER 4000 system the statistical properties of these targets were stated.
is for stationary applications, while the SCANTER 4100 radar By proper simulation of an initial radar system and its
system is intended for use on a moving platform, e.g. a vessel. environment, these operational requirements were translated
The paper describes the highlights in terms of the measured into corresponding electrical, mechanical and environmental
performance obtained and gives an overview of the radar requirements. One important conclusion was that the antenna
system. patterns for the air and sea channels had to be independently
specified to comply with the multi purpose of detecting both
1 Introduction air and sea (ground) targets.
The main initial requirements are stated in Table 1.
With the ever-increasing traffic intensity (at sea, on the
ground and in the air) the requirements for efficient, reliable Transmitter power (peak, average): 12kW,600W
and safe means to monitor and control traffic have grown Maximum pulse length: 100Jls
immensely. Furthermore, since 9/11-2001, authorities have
Operational frequency: 8.8-9.5GHz
been forced to consider an additional aspect, i.e. security. The
Number of simultaneous channels: 4
radar is a sensor able to detect (small) non-cooperative targets
Bandwidth per channel: 25MHz
at long ranges and in difficult weather conditions. Thus, a
Antenna gain (air/sea): 39dBi/37dBi
radar is invaluable in the evaluation of an asymmetric threat
scenario. Azimuth beamwidth (air/sea): 0.5%.38°-0.5°
Often military radar systems are anticipated to meet such Azimuth sidelobe level (SLL): >30dB
challenging requirements. However, the price tag may not be Elevation beam (air/sea): Cosecant square/
justified by the application and the potential risk. On the other sinc
hand, a less expensive commercial radar system will often Integrated cancellation ratio 15dB
lead to a non-valid solution. To solve this contradiction in Peak pulse compression time 60dB
terms of performance and cost, Terma has developed the sidelobes (PSLR)
SCANTER 4000/4100 series of radar systems, tailored to Dynamic range (air/sea) 90dB/125dB
provide cost-effective and reliable solutions to the above- LNFE noise figure 2.5dB
mentioned challenges. Integrated phase noise at X-band -68dBc
Receiver linear operation +19dBm
2 Applications and requirements Table 1: Main radar system requirements.
In general, a (security) authority has the basic objective to see In addition, it soon became clear that extensive pre- and post-
and follow even the smallest target, slowly-moving as well as calibration was necessary to cope with the dynamic range of
fast and maneuvering. At sea larger objects like ferries, cargo the targets.
vessels and tankers are basically not a problem with respect to
radar detection. However, reflections from large targets must
3 Radar system description
not prevent the detection of nearby small targets. Similarly,
small targets may utilize the presence of large targets to avoid It was anticipated that the electrical requirements could be
detection. To complicate matters, in some cases weather, sea difficult to meet. Furthermore, additional requirements could
and precipitation clutter have similar characteristics as the arise for future applications. Therefore, the design philosophy
small targets one desires to detect. of the SCANTER 4000/4100 should be based on a platform
Air targets move quickly from one environment to another that allows easy reconfiguration by software and by VHDL.
and the radar system must be able to adapt accordingly.
The radar system performance was brought close to the edge attenuation. If further attenuation is needed, the waveguide
of possible performance using commercial technologies STC is used. Thus, the radar sensitivity and the linear
regarding: dynamic range are optimized. In the receiver, low noise figure
• Transmitting power in X-band waveguide and high linear power handling is achieved by direct coupling
components the gates of four medium power FETs in parallel into the
• Antenna azimuth Side Lobe Level (SLL) receiver waveguide interface. The received signal are
• Hom antenna elevation beam shaping separated in four parallel channels in the down converter
• Sensitivity and power handling of the receiver stage and digitized at IF. The digitized signal is filtered, IQ
• Processing performance demodulated and decimated by four in one process.
• Calibration topologies
Air Antenna Sea Antenna
• Transmitter phase noise elimination
• Peak time Side Lobe Ratio (PSLR)

The flexibility of the hardware platform was achieved by:

• 600MHz total RF bandwidth
• 4 parallel software defined 25MHz receiver channels
• Scalable processing boards
• No real-time requirements to control software
• High level language Java interface
• Ethernet control and update path for all real-time
functions in hardware (VHDL)
• Software defined timing sequence

The SCANTER 4000 transceiver was implemented in a single

rack as shown in Figure 1 with waveguide interfaces to a sea
and an air surveillance antenna.
Air Sea

21' Sea surveillance antenna

Figure 2 Block diagram of the SCANTER 4000 radar
system

~
-s
15' Air surveillance antenna
-10
Transceiver
19" Rack -15

Figure 1 Outline of the SCANTER 4000 radar system

-15
The system block diagram in Figure 2 shows the transceiver
·30
architecture including a TWT amplifier common for both the
il
air and the sea channel. The transmitted radar signals are ·3S

software defined in pulse code RAM located in the RxTx ..w J~ ll~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 0 w ~ 30 ~ ~ ~
CTRL, directly synthesized at IF, time and frequency ~

multiplexed by a programmable DDS in the up-converter Figure 3 Azimuth normalized one-way power pattern for
chain and divided by the diplexer to the two surveillance the Terma 15'LA-CP-C-39 antenna
antennas. All local oscillators, DDSs and real time digital
clocks on the RxTx CTRL utilize one common ultra low 4 Plot example of power line mast
phase noise oscillator. This enables full phase control in all
frequency steps and signal shifts. The receiver path includes a The plot resolution and dynamic capabilities of the
40dB waveguide STC in front of the LNA and a 30dB SCANTER 4000/4100 can be illustrated by the echo from a
microstrip STC after the LNA (both part of the RxRF). When power line mast. A photo of the mast and close zoom of the
possible, the microstrip STC, provides the prime STC resulting radar image are shown in Figure 4. In Figure 6, the
signal amplitude vs. range can be seen on the A-scope plot. dB -

The green curve corresponds to normal radar video vs. range. 75

The time side lobes are limited by the noise level to -60dBp 72

and the MTI attenuation is 62dB.

63

46

30

Figure 4 Power line mast and resulting radar image 27

(blue is zero, varying intensities of yellow show signal
amplitudes). Distance between masts is 300m.

5 Adaptive Microstrip STC

The adaptive microstrip STC is located after the LNA. The
actual attenuation level in a given range cell, is set based on
the signal level in the same range cell in the prior sweeps and
the prior scan. The attenuation in the adaptive STC is o r
I ...•. ft.1fiiliiI: ~ _
therefore highly fluctuating both in range and in azimuth as
Figure 6 A-scope plot of the echo signal from a power line
can be seen in Figure 5. The reported PSLR and MTI
mast vs. range, green: normal video, brown: MTI
attenuation is obtained in the presence of the shown
video. Scale: 170m per division.
fluctuating adaptive STC attenuation using e.g. on-line
measurement of the actual STC attenuation.
5 Salient features of the SCANTER 4000/4100
Some of the salient features of the SCANTER 4000/4100
radar system are:
1) The use of long and short chirps within the radar
provides simultaneous near range and long range
coverage. The length of the 20MHz chirp can vary
from 80ns to 50IlS. This supports the detection of
small targets ranging between O.lkm and 120km.
2) The real time calibration topology needs no
"service" or "off-line" calibration of the signal path
as calibration is included in the Terma proprietary
pulse compression. The obtained PSLR is therefore
maintained without degradation due to temperature
or due to time.
3) In practice, the real time calibration eliminates the
effects of phase variations from sweep to sweep.
Thus, the Doppler processing is essentially limited
by external factors as SNR and antenna scanning
Figure 5 Adaptive STC attenuation vs. range and azimuth
modulation. More than 60dB MTI attenuation on
stationary clutter sources is therefore obtained.
4) The noise figure, 1.5dB of the LNA, and high
dynamic linear range of the receiver make it possible
to use the full dynamic range of the 14-bit ADC.
Thereby an instantaneous dynamic detection range
of more than 70dB is obtained. The high
instantaneous dynamic range is particularly
important in pulse compression radars, when the 4000/4100 radar is 60Gflops with a 400Gbps RAM
goal is to detect small and large targets in bandwidth.
neighbouring range cells. In addition the adaptive 11) To suppress simultaneous clutter from ground/sea
STC can attenuate the signal to maintain the full and precipitation using an X-band carrier, a high
dynamic range in a clutter environment. PRF modulation is applied. Beyond the horizon -
5) Dynamic range alone is not sufficient to give inter- where precipitation clutter often dominate - a
clutter or inter-target visibility. Excellent SLL and low/medium PRF is applied increasing the velocity
PSLR are also necessary. In SCANTER 4000/4100 interval in which targets can be detected.
the measured two-way side lobe level is below 12) In the SCANTER 4000, the antennas have a squint
66dB, as shown in Figure 3, and the peak time side angle vs. frequency of approximately 10 per
lobe level is below 60dB. 100MHz. This translates into a time-delay between
6) To minimize the received power from distributed the received echoes from a common target being
clutter, excellent range and azimuth resolution is illuminated by independent carrier frequencies. The
desired. As the SCANTER 4000/4100 is an X-band time delay is given by the antenna rotation rate and
radar it is possible to achieve 0.5 0 azimuth -3dB the 100-150MHz frequency separation applied
beamwidth with a 15' antenna length. A 25MHz between carriers of the pair of frequencies applied in
sampling rate is use in the signal processing to each of the two bands used for the air and sea
provide a 6m range quantization. surveillance. This time delay provides decorrelation
7) The dynamic range of the receiver, the SLL of the of sea and rain clutter between the frequency
antenna, the PSLR of the pulse compression, the diversity channels and is taken advantage of in the
azimuth and the range resolution all add up to clutter suppression processing.
providing the desired inter-clutter and inter-target
detection capability. 6 Conclusion
8) The requirement of separate elevation patterns for
the air and sea surveillance antenna beams calls for It has been discussed how a multi-purpose surveillance radar,
either a dual beam antenna or completely separate with security applications in mind, can be designed to detect
antennas. The SCANTER 4000 system applies small targets in the presence of neighbouring targets of 60dB
completely separate antennas. The Terma 21 'HG- larger RCS. Extensive on-line calibration allows for series
CP-F-38 antenna (i.e. a 21' long slotted waveguide production of a radar system without the need for manual or
antenna, circularly polarized with 38dBi gain) is off-line calibration over the lifetime of the system.
applied for the sea surveillance, while a new Terma
15'LA-CP-C-39 antenna has been developed for the The ease of reconfiguring the radar hardware (analog circuits
air surveillance. The Terma 15'LA-CP-C-39 antenna and digital processing) allows for immediate implementation
applies an end-fed slotted waveguide feeding a of future radar signal modulation schemes and techniques, as
flared hom. The dimensions of the hom are such that well as future digital signal processing of the received radar
a significant quadratic phase error is present in the echoes.
aperture of the flared hom. Phase perturbation to
provide the desired cosecant squared elevation beam The configurability has already been demonstrated with the
has been obtained by means of a novel artificial lens SCANTER 4000 radar system applied for stationary medium
[1] located in the aperture of the flared hom. to long range surveillance [2] and the SCANTER 4100 radar
9) The SCANTER 4100 radar system applies a single system used for short to medium range surveillance on
light-weight shaped CFRP reflector antenna (37dBi) moving platforms [3]. Future applications and features
employing a dual feed arrangement to provide two exploiting the platform and technologies will emerge.
independent beams operating in separate frequency
bands for the air and sea surveillance applications References
respectively. Polarization switching can be applied
independently in each of the two beams for enhanced [1] A. 0stergaard, "SCANTER 4000/4100: Synthesis,
target detection and/or precipitation clutter Design and Manufacture of an Artificial Lens for an Air
suppression. Full three-axis stabilization within 0.5 0 Surveillance Antenna" submitted for publication in lET
with respect to the horizontal plane can be provided. Radar 2007 Conference Proceedings, Edinburgh, United
10) The digital signal processing is based on a scalable Kingdom, 15-18 October 2007.
chain of Signal Processing (SP) boards connected
through multiple 10 Gbps High Speed Links. The SP [2] SCANTER 4000 link:
boards' hardware architecture is designed to support http://www.navalhistory.dk/danish/vaaben/udvikling/kys
reconfigurable processing. As all real-time functions tradarprojekt.htm
run in hardware (VHDL) the use of real-time
software become superfluous. The stable and easily [3] SCANTER 4100 links:
maintained control software is written in Java. The http://www.terma.com/index.dsp?page=888#
integrated processing capability of the SCANTER http://navy-matters.beedall.com/opvh.htm