well we're back again and this is the

final the tenth lecture in the

introduction to radar systems course and

this lecture will be on radar

transmitters and receivers here is an

outline of the different topics we're

going to discuss will will be an

introduction first we'll talk about

radar transmitters then we'll move on to

the waveform generators and radar

receiver reception and then we'll look

about the different architectures that

you can put together radar receivers and

transmitters in that are available and

and their system implications and why

they're used one way or the other and

then we'll finally will summarize okay

well here we are back again for the

tenth time at our block diagram you can

see highlighted in this box are the

sections of the radar system that we're

going to talk about today the waveform

generator where we generate the signal

for the first time it's true it's

amplified in the transmitter and then

goes out through a device called a

duplexer whenever you see duplexer

thinks switch because we don't want that

very large transmitter signal to go into

the receiver while we're transmitting

and vice versa this switch will isolate

the transmitter from the receiver and

then also they'll be the receiver

section and the signals will either be

going from the transmitter out the

antenna or the received echoes will be

coming back from the target through the

die flipped of the duplexer and into the

receiver okay here's a simplified block

diagram of the transmitter just so you

can see a big picture okay and you see

that we've got a waveform generator

where we generate with what with a small

signal and it's it's generate at a

usually a lower frequency then we

finally transmit and it's converted up

to

higher frequency but before we do that

we amplify the signal filter it and then

we go out through the duplexer a switch

that's you'll see in a minute why that's

switch needs to be there in great detail

and then out through the transmitter the

echo comes back where it's filtered and

then we amplify the signal send it into

the receiver and then we digitized it

into a signal that we can process and

detect the echoes of the targets the

radar transmitters and receivers can be

divided into these two important sub

sections though the high power transmit

of section and the low power section the

low power section is of course the

receiver because the echoes coming back

are very weak and this just gives you an

idea of the size of the signals the

waveform generator signals are very

small to begin with tens of millivolts

to a lot this and then after we up

convert them we'll there would be a very

high power transmitters section we will

amplify the signal very strongly it will

go from these the order of a tenth of

fractions of a watt up to millions of

watts thousands and millions of watts so

that amplifier makes the signal much

much larger and and then the echo that

comes back is tiny very very tiny

millionths of a watt microwatts to

milliwatts and then it is amplified and

received as I mentioned earlier ok now

with looking at the radar equation and

this is probably the only this is the

only equation we'll look at in this

lecture I want to focus on the

importance of the power of the things

that we're going to do in this section

the most important thing we obviously

want to do is maximize the

signal-to-noise ratio how strong the

target is relative to the noise and

because that's a very strong function of

fire we can detect a signal and we can

we have three things in the

transcendently receiver chain that come

into play and within the radar equation

the average power of the radar and then

the system noise temperature and the

system losses and these two down below

we want to keep as as low as possible

excuse me

we want the loss to be this to be unity

and the transmitter of the noise system

noise temperature to be low and want the

losses to be zero ideally and we want

the power to be infinitely high if we

could if the big deal is it's hard to

get very high power and it's very hard

to have very very low system losses you

have to work really hard at these things

so the signal-to-noise can be enhanced

if we have higher transmitter power we

have low system losses and we minimize

the system noise temperature okay now

let's look at high-power amplifiers for

a couple of minutes what are we doing

when we amplify the signal we start off

with a very low slow signal from the

waveform generator and then we amplify

usually in a series of stages the first

set of stages are called driver

amplifiers and they amplify some what

they don't do the gigantic amplification

in the high power amplifier and we do

this these in with a series because the

there are limitations to the amount of

amplification you can get per stage and

we want to do this with the lowest mode

it have each stage of amplification be

with the lowest possible noise and the

minimum distortion to the input signal

and it isn't as though one amplifier can

supply all of the amplification we need

so we have to do things in stages

okay and we also can can put amplifiers

architectural II different than this set

we see and in series we can put them in

series it have like a waveform generator

a driver amplifier and then a high power

amplifier and then the signal going out

to the antenna or we could take a

waveform amplifier a driver amplifier

and then send that signal divide it up

into an a series of high power

amplifiers and then combine them the

output of these into it with a summing

mechanism an addition mechanism and send

the signal out the amplifier now so we

can use it we can increase the power by

combining signals in parallel but we're

going to have efficiency problems if we

do that we have lower efficiency because

there are going to be losses in the

combiner here the high power complainer

and this increased complexity when we do

that in addition if one of these high

power amplifiers has a problem that can

be imbalances between these and we can

get reflection signals going back which

require compensation circuits and it

there's an increased complexity in the

transmitter if we have the high power

amplifiers in parallel but many systems

do quite effectively use this technique

this is just to point out that it's it's

one of the downsides of combining

amplifiers instead of having three

stages in parallel as three stages and

series excuse me putting the three in

parallel okay there are different types

of amplifiers themselves there are

vacuum tube amplifiers and there are

solid state amplifiers we think of in

say 50 years ago there was a cylindrical

glass tube a vacuum tube amplifier that

worked in radios now in the 1960s and

for the 50 late fifties sixties

transistors and integrated circuits came

in solid state

fires and that allowed us to have things

much smaller but there are upsides and

downsides when we build microwave system

microwave high power amplifiers for both

of these now for a long time we've had

vacuum tube amplifiers and they use

different physical mechanisms to do that

amplification and the different vacuum

tube amplifiers have different names

because of how they're constructed some

of them are called traveling wave tubes

klystrons

and that's sort of the thing cross field

amplifiers other devices solid-state

amplifiers are just call that they're

made with solid-state with high power

trans transistors but solid-state

systems tend to operate with a at lower

average power at lower peak power okay

and and with a higher duty cycle and the

vacuum tube amplifiers tend to operate

at very high peak power and with very

low duty cycle and the cost per unit is

very high for these vacuum tube

amplifiers that you can see one the

vacuum tube amplifier a traveling wave

tube can cost three and four five

hundred thousand three or four five five

hundred thousand dollars solid-state

amplifiers individual ones on the other

hand can be in the hundreds of dollars

but for an individual amplifier but when

you package them together in a whole

Transit transmit/receive module and look

at the cost per watt that comes out it's

quite different for vacuum tube

amplifiers the cost per watt that you

get out of the whole system for the

amplifier is at one to three dollars per

watt but you can if you're using

transmit receive modules which

effectively are other parts of the

transferrin to the solid-state

amplifiers can run you up to a hundred

dollars of water

more that the size these vacuum tube

amplifiers are huge they could be a foot

in diameter and three feet tall just the

amplifier itself and then they have very

powerful power supplies that are many

many cubic feet the solid-state

amplifiers have a very small footprint

the applications these high power

systems and as I didn't point out

probably enough early on when I'm

talking about this they they have very

high power up to a megawatt and more per

of power output and the solid-state

amplifiers are few hundreds of watts at

most in their use the vacuum tube

amplifiers are used with dish antennas

and with passive arrays and I'll get

into what passive arrays are in a moment

when I look at the architectures and

solid-state amplifies fires are used in

active arrays and digital arrays

so-called another form of phased array

system now when we look at the what

frequency regimes and what powers are

available with today's technology and

this is in rough terms when you're

looking at very high power very very

high power through the amplifiers

dominate over the whole microwave region

if you've got to build a radar that's

very very high power that they they

dominate or you're going to pay any

Norma's amount of money because you're

going to have a huge number of saule

state amplifiers there's a region of

competition and then solid-state

amplifiers and this is talking about on

an individual basis not as a whole

system they'll dominate in the lower

power region now of course you can build

systems that have high average power

they take an awful lot of amplifiers to

generate that kind of

power okay now let's look at some

examples the the tube amplifiers

klystrons and traveling-wave tubes are

the two most common and four solid-state

amplifiers they use solid-state power

transistors there's different criteria

for choosing a high power amplifier just

what are the different ones if you want

average power output as a function of

frequency the band width of operation

the duty cycle if you if you're

satisfied with a very narrow duty cycle

or to any dishes you're going to be

using a tube Raider

might be just the ideal radar for you

the lower-cost the gain of the antenna

the mean time between failure etc it's a

very complicated trade-off when you

choose one versus the other okay now

first I'd like to show you an example of

a tube radar the this particular radar

is at millstone Hill in Westford

Massachusetts it was designed in the

early 1960s and it uses a couple of

klystrons two of them and it operates at

elbe and that's a frequency of about 23

centimeters about 1300 megahertz and

it's got a peak power of 3 million watts

and an average power of a hundred and

twenty kilowatts that reaches out there

and here's the picture of the dishy

antenna that's connected to in the

building down here is the transmitter

and you'll see that in a moment and that

antenna diameter is 84 feet there is a

picture of the transmitter room give you

a size of the hugeness the the clyster

on that is used in this radar cost

$400,000 per tube it's built by Varian

it's 7 feet tall here's the the

the system itself there's a vacuum the

klystron and there are coolant hoses

because enormous power is going through

a quest it's not perfectly efficient so

there's a certain amount of heat

generated that you've got to bleed off

of the whole system would melt this very

large wave died 200 feet of waveguide

goes from the transmitter out to the

antenna there's a 1 kilowatt peak power

solid-state driver amplifier there's a

whole room that houses the power

amplifier itself there's spare tube here

and all sorts of stuff you can see this

is big radar it has a gain of 42 DB

that's a gain of 10,000 with a low duty

cycle 3% of the time it can be on weighs

600 pounds 7 feet by a foot just to give

you a physical size of the beast

ok there are other types of tubes called

traveling-wave amplify t WT s traveling

wave tubes and here are pictures of two

of them they have also happened to be

built by Varian one at s band and one at

X band and let's just first look this s

band traveling wave to its center

frequency is 3.3 gigahertz SP and I'll

remind you it's a wave length of ten

centimeters and it has a band width of

400 megahertz and it has a peak power

output of a hundred and sixty kilowatts

with eight percent duty cycle again

around 43 DB about 20,000 is the gain

and here four of them is stacked up and

run in parallel and that were built into

an Espeon transmitter and with some of

the associated equipment in the this is

eight feet tall four dimensions you can

see

they're big tubes okay and here there's

an example of an x-band traveling wave

two coupled cavity traveling wave two

it's got a gigahertz of bandwidth ten

percent BM worth peak power of a hundred

kilowatts with thirty five percent duty

cycle that means thirty five kilowatts

of power come out of this and it's got a

gain of ten to the fifth

a hundred thousand it's gonna gain Wow

powerful animal now let's look at solid

state transmitters here's one that was

built by the laboratory the radar

surveillance technology experimental

radar its acronym is wrister it's a

solid state transmitter and the power

amplifiers a power amplifier modules are

in this raft fourteen channels of power

with a hundred and forty kilowatts of

total peak power eight kilowatts of

average power you see this a higher duty

cycle than in the other systems and each

channel is supplied by a power amplifier

module ten kilowatts of peak power okay

the first active solid-state radar

active aperture system is called pave

pods and this is a picture of that it's

huge 75 foot diameter as you remember

about phased arrays from the face door

the antenna lecture there are a whole

load of 1792 of them active transmit

receive and modules each one with 340

watts of peak power there are a number I

think it's 4 3 3 transistors in parallel

I believe 3 or 4 pretty sure it's 3 and

they aligned up in parallel and the

transmitter in the receiver a different

pieces of the box and this these systems

are very reliable well over hundred I

think 150 thousand hours

of meantime between failure for the

system and this particular radar is

located on Cape Cod and it does

ballistic missile early warning okay

it's built by the Raytheon Company now

let's talk a little bit about duplexes

why is the big deal with duplexes I'll

put all three lines on here at once well

we put out this transmit signal and then

we listen for the echoes and during that

window we're listening very carefully

for an echo that's very small these

little spikes correspond to when we're

sampling at a different time delay after

the transmitted signal we're listening

to see if there's a very small radar

echo we do that for a while and then we

transmit again now and so what that

means is we are transmitting for a while

and then we receive now the total time

between we stop to transmit and we start

to transmit again call that the pulse

repetition interval but the thing I want

to focus on is we do not want this

transmitted when we're transmitting we

do not want any signal to get into the

receiver so we want to switch out there

and that switches the duplexer okay do

we use duplex or switching to isolate

how much isolation are we talking about

transmit is typically can transmit peak

power signals from 10 kilowatts to a

megawatt megawatt think of that and the

received signals can be tens of

microwatts to a mill áwhat so we're

talking about 90 DB approximately you

can have nine orders of magnitude we

want that switch to isolate one from the

other if you remember back to the first

lecture we saw that the in the chain

home radar that the transmitter was

located in a different physical location

by hundreds of feet in those days they

weren't great at building duplexes so

they put the transmitter physically

distant by hundreds of feet from the

receiver in many cases okay so the

technology is not easy to make something

99 orders of magnitude of isolation

between the transmitter and the receiver

so that's the very important function of

the duplex so now let's just look about

it a little more detail so it can sink

in well when we have the transmitter on

we connect the antenna to the

transmitter and we want to do that

without any loss you want the high power

energy from that the energy from the

transmitter to go right through that

switch and out the antenna with no loss

we want to have nothing going back into

the receiver we've got to protect that

very sensitive receiver that's used to

used to listening and detecting million

micro watts from megawatts and kilowatts

so we want to turn that off and then on

receive we want to connect the antenna

through the duplexer to have a limit of

switch to make sure if stuff does leak

in god forbid we don't fry the receiver

we want the transmitter of course is

going to be turned off we want to have

an additional this limiter switch for

additional protection say against strong

interference from a nearby signal and so

that's the switching with it that's the

function of the duplexer it's got a cut

out completely

nine deep waters of magnitude the

signals that's the what that duplexer

does so when you hear the word duplexer

you know it's not just like your switch

on the light bulb it's a very different

entity