Pulse Doppler Radar

Introduction
Radar transmits high frequency signal and receive the reflected signal from the
target to gather information of target. Pulse radar transmits high power and high
frequency pulses toward target to measure the shift between the transmit frequency
and received frequency and sometime it waits for the echo of transmitted signal
before transmitting another pulse. On the basis of choice of pulse repetition
frequency we can divide pulse radar into two types.
1- MTI (Moving Target indicator)
2- Pulse Doppler Radar
MTI radar uses a low pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and pulse Doppler radar uses
high PRF. From Doppler radar we can distinguish between stationary objects and
moving target.
Principle
Pulse Doppler radar is used to separate the small moving target in presence of large
stationary objects (clutter) by determining the targets relative velocity. It uses the
Doppler frequency shift while comparing the received signal and transmitted signal.
The echo from stationary objects has same phase and cancelled when comparing to
transmitted signal while moving target has a frequency shift. Pulse Doppler radar
uses high PRF so it has ambiguous range measurement but the advantage is it can
operate with unambiguous Doppler. The opposite happens with MTI. It has a low
PRF so it can measure range unambiguously but it has ambiguous Doppler this is
called blind speed.
The transmitted signal is
(2fT t)
T( )
And received Signal is
(2fT (t+ t) )
T( )
t=2R/C
R(

T(

Where R =R V0 t
R(

R(

Let

)
(

and
( )

( )

(
(

)
(

where,
At = amplitude of transmitted signal
Ar = Amplitude of received signal
R= Distance from radar to target
fT =Frequency of the transmitted signal
fd = Doppler shift frequency.
t = Time
C= velocity of propagation.
The difference frequency component after mixing Cos(2 fT) and passing through a
LPF is
Vdiff =

For stationary targets the Doppler frequency shift fd will be zero so Vdiff will not vary
with time and may take on any value of +/- Ar. But when the target is in motion
relative to radar, fd has a value other than zero and the voltage corresponding to the
difference frequency from the mixer will vary with time.
If the Doppler frequency is negative, the target is going farther from radar and if the
Doppler frequency is positive, target is approaching the radar.

Figure1-Pulse Doppler Radar Antenna

Doppler Ambiguities and Blind Speed

(

The speed of the target can be measured by this equation. According to the Nyquist
criteria the minimum sampling frequency should be equal to twice to signal
bandwidth to capture correctly the frequency content of signal. In Doppler radar the
sampling frequency is PRF. It can extract one sample each pulse repetition interval
and measure the Doppler shift over an interval of PRF/2 unambiguously and some
radar can extract two samples per PRI and measure Doppler over an interval of PRF
unambiguously. Such radars have twice sampling rate.

This equation shows the phase delay between transmitted pulse and received pulse.
The Doppler frequency can only be detected unambiguously if the phase change
between pulses is less than 2 . The Doppler frequency is equal to PRF when phase
change equals to 2 The speed that cause the Doppler shift to be an integer multiple
of 2 is called blind speed because a shift change of 2 cannot be distinguished from
a shift of 2 If the Doppler shift is greater than 2 the target can be detected but
the observe Doppler shift will be incorrect .So we use multiple PRF to remove the
blind speed. The modified equation is
(

Waveform, Spectra and Eclipse Zone

A pulse Doppler radar consists the feature of both continuous wave radar and pulse
radar. Other types of radars only works when not pointed down because in this case
the reflection off the ground overwhelmed any returns from the target. As the
ground moves at the same speed but in the other direction of target, Doppler
techniques allow the ground return to filtered out and revealing the moving target.
Pulse Doppler radar can be made by providing a pulse modulator and power
amplifier to CW radar, which turns on and off the amplifier to generate pulses. It
consists of transmitter, receiver, indicator and antennas. A small portion of CW
oscillator transmitted pulse is preserved as coherent reference signal to detect the
Doppler shift. Doppler radar has high PRF that is a series of coherent pulses. In
single antenna radar, the receiver is turned off during transmission process and vice
versa. By high PRF we get a high average power and unambiguous detection of
Doppler shift. This also needs a secondary modulation to measure range.
The PRF is chosen high enough to provide unambiguous Doppler shift so that the
transmitter is turned off the whole time to receive to whole pulse because when the

targets moves the total round trip time changes and some off the pulse parts may
arrive when the receiver is turned off. That is called the eclipsed zone.

Figure 2- A scope display of Radar

Delay Line Cancelers and Range gated Filter

Delay line cancelers rejects zero frequency and frequency equal to the integer
multiple of PRF and allows all other frequencies. Single Delay line canceler are
introduced to produce a pulse repetition interval (1/PRF). In this, the delayed
version of previous pulse is subtracted from the new pulse. The delay line canceler
acts as a filter, which rejects the d-c components of clutter. Its amplitude response is
half of the sine wave.
The signal received from a target at range R0 is
V1 =

and the delayed signal from the previous time is

V2 =

The output from the subtractor is

V = V1 - V2 =

Where,
V1 = Signal received
V2 = Previous signal delayed by pulse repetition interval
T = Pulse repetition Interval
Ar = Amplitude of signal
= Phase of signal

Figure3- Single pulse Delay line Canceler

Figure-4 Frequency response of single delay line canceler

When we use more than one cancelers line they become complex cancelers. The
three pulses canceler is an example of range-gated filter. Figure shows a range-gated
filter implemented in analog form, which uses one filter for each range gate. In
received spectrum we have main lobe clutter placed at zero frequency. This type of
setup has band pass filter to reject clutter at zero frequency and at integer multiple
of PRF. Sampler determines the position of range gate.
Figure-5 General form of Transversal filter for MTI signal processing
Digital Signal Processing
The digital signal processing of pulse Doppler radar allows small high-speed objects
to be detected in close proximity to large slow moving reflectors. To achieve this, the
transmitter must be coherent and should produce low phase noise during detection

interval. Pulse Doppler signal processing also includes ambiguity resolution to

identify true range and velocity. These days, Fast Fourier transform has replaced the
analog filter method of using analog delay line to remove clutter.
Pulse Repetition Frequency-Pulse Doppler radar uses multiple PRF. It works on
three modes low PRF, High PRF and medium PRF. Range and velocity cannot be
measured directly using medium PRF, and ambiguity resolution is required to
identify true range and speed.
Antenna- Pulse-Doppler radar is generally limited to mechanically aimed antennas.
Mechanical RF components, such as wave-guide, can produce Doppler modulation
due to phase shift induced by vibration. Doppler is incompatible with most
electronically steered phase-array antenna. Most antenna phase shifters operating
at PRF above 1 kHz introduce phase shift unless special provisions are made, such
as reducing phase shifter settling time to a few dozen nanoseconds.
Uses
Pulse Doppler radar has two modes for target detection.
Search
Track
In search mode radar detects target over a large area. Radar can do this by using
three modes. Low PRF search High PRF search and medium PRF search.
In tracking we do continuous measurement of targets parameters. We can do this
by using Low PRF, High PRF and medium PRF.
Search Modes involve frequency filtering, amplitude thresholding and ambiguity
resolution. Once a reflection has been detected and resolved. Pulse Doppler radar
automatically transitions to tracking mode for the volume of space surrounding the
track.
Performance
The pulse Doppler radar equation can be used to understand trade-offs between
design constraints. This is very simple form of modeling.
(

Where
R=distance from target
Pt=Transmitted Power
Gt= Gain of transmitted antenna
Ar= effective aperture area of receiving antenna
=Radar cross section
F=propagation factor
D=Doppler filter size
Kb= Boltzmanns constant

T=Temperature in Kelvin
B=Bandwidth
N=Noise Figure
Advantages
Pulse Doppler radar system measures the range to objects by measuring the elapsed
time between sending a pulse of radio energy and receiving the reflection off the
object and the velocity measurement through Doppler shift in frequency. This
allows the radar to separate the reflections from the multiple objects located in the
same volume of space by separating the objects using a spread spectrum to
segregate different signals.
First advantage is Rejection speed is selectable on the pulse-Doppler target
detection system but nothing below that speed will be detected. Pulse
Doppler radar uses the signal processing to exclude unwanted moving
signals from slow moving objects. This is knows as clutter rejection.
Rejection velocity usually set just above the wind speed. Surface reflection
appears in almost all radar. This is called ground clutter. Ground clutter
generally appears in circular region within the radius of 25 miles near the
ground-based radar.
Pulse Doppler radar allows the radar antenna to be pointed directly to the
ground without overwhelming the computer from false alarm and without
reducing sensitivity.
It increases detection range by 300% or more in comparison to Moving
target indication by improving sub-clutter visibility.
It has an advantage when attempting to detect missiles and low observability
aircraft flying near terrain or sea surface.
Disadvantage
The scan time is very large. It is a critical factor for some systems because
vehicle moving at or above the speed of sound can travel one mile every few
seconds. The maximum time to scan the entire volume of sky must be on
order of dozen seconds or less operating in the environment.
Pulse Doppler radar can be very slow to cover the volume of space above
horizon unless fan beam is used.
Pulse Doppler antenna must be slow enough so that the return signals from
last three different PRF can be produced out to maximum anticipated
detection range. This is known as dwell time.
The search radar that includes pulse-Doppler are usually dual mode because
best overall performance is achieved when pulse-Doppler is used for areas
with high false alarm rates (horizon or below and weather), while
conventional radar will scan faster in free-space where false alarm rate is low
(above horizon with clear skies).