ABSTRACT

Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, direction, or speed of objects.Radar operates by radiating electromagnetic energy and detecting the echo returned from reflecting objects (targets). The nature of the echo signal provides information about the target. The electromagnetic energy from the radar is transmitted in all the directions. This transmitted energy is reflected by the clutter and the targets if they are present.

RCN receives commands from the HMI to put the system under various modes of operation, and acts accordingly. It processes the data from SPU, applies clustering and tracking algorithms and sends it to the display. It also displays the time history and the cross range against the down range.

Display unit is the front end unit of any application. Our aim is to develop display software for radar applications, the software is able to display static and moving objects, to accomplish this task the software makes use of several threads to monitor image data which is to be received from signal processing unit and to map the detected object on the display area.

The data is received over Ethernet which is captured over UDP and main display.

INTRODUCTION

PROJECT PURPOSE
Our aim is to create a GUI which is software implementation of RADAR display which accepts the display data received from radar controller and plots it on the display showing the targets detected.

To accomplish this task the software makes use of several threads to monitor image data which is to be received from signal processor unit and must be mapped on to the display area.

PROJECT SCOPE

CHAPTER 1

ORGANIZATION PROFILE

1.1INTRODUCTION
Born in the barracks of High Grounds in Jan 1958 as Electronic Research and Development Establishment, got the present name Electronics & Radar Development Establishment in Jun 1962. With the nucleus personnel, equipment and material inherited from parental Instruments &Electronics(TDE), initial emphasis was laid to undertake such tasks as investigation of defects in equipment or necessary modifications required to improve the performance of equipment covering the entire spectrum of defence electronics. Digital electronics and embedded software became integral part of every equipment and system conceived and developed. And two low level radars, Local Warning Radar (LOWARD) and Low Flying Target Detection Radar (LFDR) for Indian Army and Indian Air Force respectively, were the first indigenous radars mooted for development using contemporary technologies like digital signal processing, digital display and radar data processor. Later, they were renamed as INDRA-I and INDRA-II respectively. Needless to say that the design, development and delivery of INDRA series radars, followed by Rajendra Phased Array Radar, WLR, BFSR-SR, 3D CAR, ROHINI, REVATHI, 3D-TCR, BHARANI, ASLESHA, XV-2004 and still counting, is the true reflector of maturity of LRDE, not only in the mastering of ground based, airborne and ship borne complex radar systems, but also practice of concurrent system engineering, R&D Industry Partnership and Professional approach to Technology & Project Management. The user s unflinching faith has transformed LRDE as a force to reckon with. Many of such radars are now accepted or inducted by the users. LRDE transformed itself as a matured, dependable system house of Radar, adopting modern Project management Practices, promoting industries as partners and collaborators, and developing human resources. Major thrust was given for self-reliance in technologies, components and industrial relationships.

With the activities directed towards design and development of complex, state-of-the-art electronically scanning TR module based active array ground based and airborne radars, it is a matter of time when the world will witness the marvelous achievements of LRDE in digital array radars.

1.2 QUALITY POLICY

LRDE is committed to the indigenous development of modern radar systems through an effective Quality Management System.

1.3 CORE COMPETENCIES

Radar System Engineering for Ground based, Ship borne and Air borne systems Design and Development of major sub-systems - Mechanical and Electronic Scanning Antennas, High Performance Transmitters, Exciters, Receivers, T/R Modules, Digital Signal & Data Processors, Mechanical Engineering

Radar System Integration and Evaluation Environmental engineering including EMI/EMC

1.4 Areas of Work

Activities Army - Multifunction Phased Array Radar and 3D Surveillance Radar for Akash Missile Weapon System - Low Level 2D Radar for Fire Control and Air Defence - Short Range Battle Field Surveillance Radar - Weapon Locating Radar -3D Tactical Control Radar Design and Development of Radar Systems

Air Force - Multifunction Phased Array Radar and 3D Surveillance Radar for Akash Missile Weapon System - Active Phased Array Radar for AEW&C

- Low level 2D radar and 3D Short & Medium Range Surveillance Radar for Air Defence - Medium Power Radar (MPR) - Low Level Transportable Radar (LLTR) - Active Electronically Scanned Array Radar (AESA) Navy - Maritime Patrol Radar for fixed and Rotary Wing Aircraft - Maritime Patrol Radar with SAR & ISAR - 3D Medium Range Surveillance Radar for ASW Corvettes Development of Radar Technologies - Antennae: Slotted Waveguide, Patch Array &Multibeam Antenna - T/R Modules and Active Aperture Arrays - Programmable DSP - Radar Data Processors - High Average Power TWT based Transmitters - High purity sources - Multi-channel double hetrodyne receivers

AN INTRODUCTION TO RADAR

The word RADAR is an acronym coined in 1942 (II world war) by U.S Navy for Radio Detection andRanging. It is basically a means of gathering information about distant objects or targets by sending electromagnetic waves at them and analyzing reflected waves or the echo signals.

1.1 DESCRIPTION OF RADAR

Radar operates by radiating electromagnetic energy and detecting the echo returned from reflecting objects (targets). The nature of the echo signal provides information about the target. The range, or distance, to the target is found from the time it takes for the radiated energy to travel to the target and back. The angular location of the target is found with a directive antenna (one with a narrow beam width) to sense the Angle of arrival of the echo signal. If the target is moving, radar can derive its track, or trajectory, and predict the future location. The shift in frequency of the received echo signal due to the Doppler effect caused by a moving target allows a radar to separate desired moving targets (such as aircraft) from undesired stationary targets (such as land and sea clutter) even though the stationary echo signal may be many orders of magnitude greater than the moving target. With sufficiently high resolution, radar can discern something about the nature of a target's size and shape. Radar resolution may be obtained in range or angle, or both. Range resolution requires large bandwidth. Angle resolution requires (electrically) large antennas. Radar is an active device in that it carries its own transmitter. Radar can detect relatively small targets at near or far distances and can measure their range with precision in all weather, which is its chief advantage when compared with other sensors. Radar was originally developed to satisfy the needs of the military for surveillance and weapon control. Military applications have funded much of the development of its technology. However, radar has seen significant civil applications for the safe travel of aircraft, ships, and spacecraft; the remote sensing of the environment, especially the weather; and law enforcement and many other applications.

1.2 RADAR BLOCK DIAGRAM

Transmitter:The transmitter in above figure is shown as a power amplifier, such as a Klystron, Traveling-Wave Tube, Crossed-Field Amplifier, or solid-state device. A power oscillator such as a magnetron also can be used as the transmitter; but the magnetron usually is of limited average power compared with power amplifiers, especially the klystron, which can produce much larger average power than can a magnetron and is more stable. (It is the average power, rather than the peak power, which is the measure of the capability of radar.) The transmitter of a typical ground-based air surveillance radar might have an average power of several kilowatts. Transmitters not only must be able to generate high power with stable waveforms, but they must often operate over a wide bandwidth, with high efficiency and with long, trouble-free life. Duplexer: The duplexer acts as a rapid switch to protect the receiver from damage when the high-power transmitter is on. On reception, with the transmitter off, the duplexer directs the weak received signal to the receiver rather than to the transmitter. Duplexers generally are some form of gas-discharge device and may be used with solid-state or gas-discharge receiver protectors. A solid-state circulator is sometimes used to provide further isolation between the transmitter and the receiver. Antenna:The transmitter power is radiated into space by a directive antenna which concentrates the energy into a narrow beam.The narrow, directive beam that is characteristic of most radar antennas not only concentrates the energy on target but also permits a

measurement of the direction to the target. A typical antenna beam width for the detection or tracking of aircraft might be about 1 or 2. Airborne radars and surface based 3D air surveillance radars (those that rotate mechanically in azimuth to measure the azimuth angle but use some form of electronic steering or beam forming to obtain the elevation angle) often employ planar array apertures. Receiver:The signal collected by the antenna is sent to the receiver, which is almost always of the super heterodyne type. The receiver serves to (1) separate the desired signal from the ever-present noise and other interfering signals and (2) amplify the signal sufficiently to actuate a display, such as a cathode-ray tube, or to allow automatic processing by some form of digital device. The input stage of the receiver must not introduce excessive noise which would interfere with the signal to be detected. A transistor amplifier as the first stage offers acceptably low noise for many radar applications. Display:The display for surveillance radar is usually a cathode-ray tube with a PPI (plan position indicator) format. A PPI is an intensity-modulated, map like presentation that provides the target's location in polar coordinates (range and angle). Older radars presented the video output of the receiver (called raw video) directly to the display, but more modern radars generally display processed video, that is, after processing by the automatic detector or the automatic detector and tracker (ADT). These are sometimes called cleaned-up displays since the noise and background clutter is removed.

Fig 1. System Function Structure

Fig 2. Class diagram for System Realization

The interfaces with external components for the software are given in the following figure.

Radar Controller

HMI & Display Software

User

Figure: External interfaces

Software Features: Visualization: The detected targets are presented in 2D (x,y) positions with indication of its confidence ratings. Multiple Targets should be presented with time history of target motion. Basic image tools are required for better visualization. Configuration: Ability to configure the radar through GUI for different operating modes depending on user requirement . Ability to store, view and load the configuration settings Communication: The software should communicate with radar controller for operation of the radar. The interface to the radar controller is through Ethernet SocketCommunication. Radar status Display of health status of radar subsystems should be possible

Introduction
Display system has an important purpose of visually presenting the output of the radar receiver indicating the presence of target and about its location. The early radars presented the observation situation picture to operators using a displaycalled plan position indicator (PPI). In PPI, radar video and antenna azimuth are used, resulting in a map like presentation in polar coordinates of range and azimuth. The display is blank except when echo signals are present.

The image generated by only using radar video and antenna azimuth is sometimes called raw radar picture. The main Challenge with this approach is persistence, besides raw radar picture, modern radar displays usually visualize two more categories of data. First includes plots and tracks generated by detection and tracking systems inherent to most modern radars. Second includes various maps, markers, and other additional information needed by radar operators.

The main function of display system is accomplishing information transfer between the radar and the user in a effective way. With the enhancement in embedded technologies, display system has gone through the way from dedicated computer to Personal Computer (PC), and then from PC to common embedded platform. At present most radar display system are being developed in Windows, Linux or Vxworks Operating System (OS), and the final system is designed as a widget which accomplishes all function include display, controller and radar configuration.

This paper is organized as follows, in section II, the system software architecture and design technique are presented. Section III explains the realization of the system. Finally, in section IV results and conclusion are drawn.

2.2 Graphical User Interface (GUI) GUI is a user interface built with graphical objects, such as buttons, text fields, and menus. For display system, Qt designer was chosen to create the GUI front end. Qt is the standard framework for developing high performance cross platform applications which is available in open source licences. Further, for the purpose of this Display work the GUI application was developed using Qt SDK with Qt Creator 2.3.1 running in 32 bit mode on Windows operating system. The codes written in our modules were compiled with Qt 4.7.4 [10, 11].The same code was compiled on Linux Operating system also. 2.3 System Software Structure When the system is switched on, POST (power on self test) self-inspection program is executed first to check the system interfaces are up or down, and then show inspection result to the user.

The POST includes serial port module, Ethernet communication Module and data processing. In the next stage, the command data will be sent to FPGA through Ethernet interface, also few command messages via Serial Port. Based onabove explanation, pictorial view of the function can be represented as shown in Figure1.

Fig 1. System Function Structure

III Realization of the system

3.0 Class Diagram Display system initially was developed on PC , later ported on to an embedded system which is based on OMAP platform. It has several functions which includes communication, data processing and graphics display.

Figure 2 shows a UML class diagram for the design of our system. In this paper, the design is presented by Class Diagram. Class diagram is a UML that describes a system by showing the system classes. The Class is a description of an object, and may have attributes and operations associated with it. Three of classes are presented in this paper for the design. The first class is network which consists of several attributes, function as operations which initializes the Ethernet Sockets and receives the image data. The second class is Display Widget ,which consists . The last class is a main window.

Fig 2. Class diagram for System Realization Display Widget is in charge of dispatching all interactive messages launched by extended windows and main window. Main window and extended windows run their event loops and keep watch on the received data.

FIG:System function structure

Switch ON/OFF
ON Initialisation of Subsystems

All Subsystems ready

No

Yes
Send control words to all the subsystems from HMI

Message Handling between SP, HMI, RDP

Radar operates with default control words

Display Section: The display system provides the user with the information of the detected targets, target positions, moving/ stationary objects and detected humans. The display Software is designed in Qt SDK. The display system is capable of presenting 2D view of the scenario and tracks time history. In this work a suitable graphical user interface (GUI) is also designed. Using this GUI we can easily generate real-time control signals which would influence the functions of radar system. GUI is a user interface built with graphical objects, such as buttons, text fields, and menus. For display system, Qt designer was chosen to create the GUI front end, which is the most modern framework for C++ development, besides being open-source and multiplatform. Further, Display, GUI application was developed using Qt SDK with Qt Creator 2.4.1 running in 32 bit mode on Windows operating system. The codes written in our modules were compiled with Qt 4.8.1.The same code was compiled on Linux (with minor changes) Operating system also

Control Signals from HMI

Control Commands from user (keys/button)

HMI
Software
Display Data from RCN

Display
2D Graphical Output

Software2D Graphical Output

Control Signals To Radar

Controller

The HMI is the frontend push buttons available to the operator to command the radar system. The HMI will mainly consist of a keypad (buttons). In summary, following push buttons would be available for the final user: Power On/Off Toggle Range(System Range - 5m,10m,15m) Toggle Mode (Tracking,Imaging,Doppler) Bite/ Tx Standby/Active

All the above options would be available through push buttons. Reset (s/w reset)

On/off Button: should be pressed for few seconds (2 or 3seconds) to turn on/turn off system. Reset switch: If pressed the system is set to reset.( Reset of SPU, RCN, Display and otherSub-systems through operator request) Health Status: Display software should be able to represent the health of radar system. In the background radar controller takes the health of the subsystemsfor monitoring action and report periodically (maybe for every 20 sec) to the Display The Health Status message is received along with the image data from SPU. The parameters that SPU sends to RCN are data, health and acknowledgement. A suitable battery level indicator is also displayed as a part of Health Monitoring,the battery unit will be functioning continuously till it requires recharging(may be 5hrs).

The Display Section forms the frontend element of the Radar system. Display Software should display various modes of operation along with its associated parameters and should synchronize to various sub-systems for successful execution of the command raised by the operator. The commands should be communicated to the Display Unit through the Ethernet or Serial Interface or Discrete i/o lines. Display Software should manage to operate in real time during each of the modes of operation. Display Software should be able to display stationary targets and moving targets in real-time. Each target would be represented by a different color (e.g. dark/light gray(in contrast with background color) for stationary objects and RGB colour for moving targets as shown in Fig .). If any motionless target is fixed for more than 5 seconds and if it has a Doppler corresponding to that of a human being, that would be indicated too. A screenshot of the Display screen is shown below.
2D View

1.5D View Status bar

Display software consists of several threads to monitor the data continuously from various subsystems.
1nd 2rd 3th 4th

thread to monitor data from FPGA thread to read data from HMI thread to display status bar thread to display 2D view and 1.5D View.

1.5D View: Displays Range over Time providing a history of the target motion. 2D View/Plain View: Displays 2D view Top down View of Target. Status Bar: Displays Various Icons mention in the table below

Icon System Range Options System Operational Modes Battery Indicator Video Transmitter Signal Level

Description Range selected : 5M,10M,20M Indicates Tracker or Imaging or Doppler Indicates status of battery (Suitable Icon to indicate Battery Level) Suitable Icon to video transmitter(like Wifi Icon) Indicates received signal level (Suitable Icon to indicate Signal Level)

Time History is an window in Display Screen Display Grid : The Display Grid appears on the front Screen enables the operator to measure distance of the target/object from the system and motion of the target. The 1.5D View Range over Time Section: The horizontal axis measures time: each grid cell represents approximately 5secs,there are 4 cells in 1.5D view section The vertical axis measures the distance of the target/object from the system, each cell represents 1meter. The purpose of the Time History is to determine the target trajectory as a function of time. For more precise results, appropriate model of target movement is Range Over Time is used within Display. The 2D View To Down view Section: The vertical axis measures the distance of the target/object from the system, each cell represents 1meter. The horizontal axis represents the cross range.
The Qt code developed is attached along with this document for your reference

Tracking is an associated command of radar that associates consecutive radar observations of the same target into tracks. It is useful when the radar system is reporting data from several different targets. In addition, the tracking should be able to use the sequence of plots to estimate the current speed and direction of the target. When several targets are present, the radar tracker aims to provide one track for each target, with the track history often being used to indicate where the target has come from. A radar tracker will typically contain the following information Location Direction Tail (to trace target from where it arrived ) Speed Unique tracking identity (different colours for multiple targets)

There are several mathematical algorithms used for implementing a radar tracking algorithm , the Kalman filter is a widely applied concept in time series analysis used for radar tracking.