WELCOME TO THE LECTURE ON CW DOPPLER RADAR

DATE :11/01/2010

CW Doppler Radar: A simple Doppler radar,

such as the one shown in figure 1, sends out continuous sine waves rather then pulses. It uses the Doppler effect to detect the frequency change caused by a moving target and displays this as a relative velocity.

circulator CW transmitter oscillator ft

Ftfd

Detector

fd

Audio amplifier

fd

Frequency counter

FIG:1 Simple Doppler CW rader

Circulator: The circulator is used to provide isolation

between the transmitter and the receiver. The isolation is of the order of 30dB.

Detector: The signal can be mixed in the detector with returns

from the target and the difference is the Doppler frequency.

Audio amplifier: The detector output can be amplified

audio amplifier before being applied to a frequency counter

with an

Frequency counter: The counter is a normal one, except that

its output is shown as kilometers or miles per hour, rather than the actual frequency is hertz.

The main disadvantage of this system as simple as this is its lack of sensitivity. The receiver whose block diagram is shown in fig: 2 is an improvement in that regard

Transmitti ng antenna

CW transmitter oscillator ft Transmitter mixer ft+fi Fifd Receiver mixer IF amplifier Fifd Detector fi IF oscillator

Receiving antenna

fd Audio amplifier fd

Fig:2

A small portion of the transmitter output is mixed with the output at a local oscillator, and the sum is fed to the receiver mixer. This also receives the Doppler shifted signal from its antenna and produces an output difference frequency that is typically 30MHz, plus or minus the Doppler frequency. The output of this mixer is amplified and demodulated again, and the signal from the second detector is just the Doppler frequency.

Advantages: The advantages of CW Doppler radar is as follows: i) CW Doppler radar is capable of giving accurate measurements of relative velocities. ii) It uses low transmitting power. iii)Low power consumption and equipment whose size is much smaller than that of comparable pulsed equipment. iv) It is unaffected by the presence of stationary targets. v)It is also capable of measuring a large range of target speeds quickly and accurately. vi) CW radar can also measure the direction of the target

Limitations: The limitations of CW radar are:

i) it is rather easily confused by the presence of a large number of targets. ii) Doppler radar is incapable of indicating the range of a target. It can only show its velocity, because the transmitted signal is unmodulated.

Applications: CW Doppler radar has a quite number of

applications. These are: i) In aircraft navigation for speed measurement. ii) In a rate-of-climb meter for vertical-takeoff planes. iii) Perhaps its most commonly encountered application is in the radar speed meters used by police