Radar is an object-detection system which uses electromagnetic waves—specially radio waves—to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships,spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish, or antenna, transmits pulses of radio waves or microwaves which bounce off any object in their path. The object returns a tiny part of the wave's energy to a dish or antenna which is usually located at the same site as the transmitter.
The military applications of radar were developed in secret in nations across the world during World War II. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the U.S. Navy as an acronym for radio detection and ranging. The term radar has since entered the English and other languages as the common noun radar, losing all capitalization. In theUnited Kingdom, the technology was initially called RDF (range and direction finding), using the same initials used for radio direction finding to conceal its ranging capability..
The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems,antimissile systems; nautical radars to locate landmarks and other ships; aircraft anticollision systems; ocean-surveillance systems, outer-space surveillance ; meteorological precipitation monitoring; altimetry and flight-control systems; guided-missile target-locating systems; and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing and are capable of extracting objects from very high noise levels.
Other systems similar to radar have been used in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is "lidar", which uses visible light from lasers rather than radio waves.
History
Several inventors, scientists, and engineers contributed to the development of radar.
As early as 1886, Heinrich Hertz showed that radio waves could be reflected from solid objects. In 1895 Alexander Popov, a physics instructor at the Imperial Russian Navy school in Kronstadt, developed an apparatus using a coherer tube for detecting distant lightning strikes. The next year, he added a spark-gap transmitter. During 1897, while testing this in communicating between two ships in the Baltic Sea, he took note of an interference beat caused by the passage of a third vessel. In his report, Popov wrote that this phenomenon might be used for detecting objects, but he did nothing more with this observation.
The German Christian Huelsmeyer was the first to use radio waves to detect "the presence of distant metallic objects". In 1904 he demonstrated the feasibility of detecting a ship in dense fog, but not its distance. He received Reichspatent Nr. 165546 for his detection device in April 1904, and later patent 169154 for a related amendment for also determining the distance to the ship. He also received a British patent on September 23, 1904 for the first full Radar application, which he called telemobiloscope.
In August 1917 Nikola Tesla outlined a concept for primitive radar units. He stated, by their [standing electromagnetic waves]use we may produce at will, from a sending station, an electrical effect in any particular region of the globe; [with which] we may determine the relative position or course of a moving object, such as a vessel at sea, the distance traversed by the same, or its speed."
In 1922 A. Hoyt Taylor and Leo C. Young, researchers working with the U.S. Navy, discovered that when radio waves were broadcast at 60 MHz it was possible to determine the range and bearing of nearby ships in the Potomac River. Despite Taylor's suggestion that this method could be used in darkness and low visibility, the Navy did not immediately continue the work. Serious investigation began eight years later after the discovery that radar could be used to track airplanes.
Before the Second World War, researchers in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, independently and in great secrecy, developed technologies that led to the modern version of radar.Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa followed prewar Great Britain, and Hungary had similar developments during the war.
In 1934 the Frenchman Émile Girardeau stated he was building an obstacle-locating radio apparatus "conceived according to the principles stated by Tesla" and obtained a patent (French Patent n° 788795 in 1934) for a working system. A part of which was installed on the Normandie liner in 1935.
During the same year, the Soviet military engineer P.K.Oschepkov, in collaboration with Leningrad Electrophysical Institute, produced an experimental apparatus, RAPID, capable of detecting an aircraft within 3 km of a receiver.The French and Soviet systems, however, had continuous-wave operation and could not give the full performance that was ultimately at the center of modern radar.
Full radar evolved as a pulsed system, and the first such elementary apparatus was demonstrated in December 1934 by the American Robert M. Page, working at the Naval Research Laboratory. The year after the US Army successfully tested a primitive surface to surface radar to aim coastal battery search lights at night. This was followed by a pulsed system demonstrated in May 1935 by Rudolf Kühnhold and the firm GEMA in Germany and then one in June 1935 by an Air Ministry team led byRobert A. Watson Watt in Great Britain. Later, in 1943, Page greatly improved radar with themonopulse technique that was then used for many years in most radar applications.
The British were the first to fully exploit radar as a defence against aircraft attack. This was spurred on by fears that the Germans were developing death rays. The Air Ministry asked British scientists in 1934 to investigate the possibility of propagating electromagnetic energy and the likely effect. Following a study, they concluded that a death ray was impractical but that detection of aircraft appeared feasible. Robert Watson Watt's team demonstrated to his superiors the capabilities of a working prototype and then patented the device (British Patent GB593017).It served as the basis for the Chain Home network of radars to defend Great Britain. In April 1940, Popular Science showed an example of a radar unit using the Watson-Watt patent in an article on air defence, but not knowing that the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy were working on radars with the same principle, stated under the illustration, "This is not U.S. Army equipment." Also, in late 1941 Popular Mechanics had an article in which a US scientist conjured what he believed the British early warning system on the English east coast most likely looked like and was very close to what it actually was and how it worked in principle.
The war precipitated research to find better resolution, more portability, and more features for radar, including complementary navigation systems like Oboe used by the RAF's Pathfinder. The postwar years have seen the use of radar in fields as diverse as air traffic control, weather monitoring,astrometry, and road speed control.
The information provided by radar includes the bearing and range (and therefore position) of the object from the radar scanner. It is thus used in many different fields where the need for such positioning is crucial. The first use of radar was for military purposes: to locate air, ground and sea targets. This evolved in the civilian field into applications for aircraft, ships, and roads.
In aviation, aircraft are equipped with radar devices that warn of obstacles in or approaching their path and give accurate altitude readings. The first commercial device fitted to aircraft was a 1938 Bell Lab unit on some United Air Lines aircraft. They can land in fog at airports equipped with radar-assisted ground-controlled approach(GCA) systems, in which the plane's flight is observed on radar screens while operators radio landing directions to the pilot.
Marine radars are used to measure the bearing and distance of ships to prevent collision with other ships, to navigate and to fix their position at sea when within range of shore or other fixed references such as islands, buoys, and lightships. In port or in harbour, vessel traffic service radar systems are used to monitor and regulate ship movements in busy waters. Police forces use radar guns to monitor vehicle speeds on the roads.
Meteorologists use radar to monitor precipitation. It has become the primary tool for short-term weather forecasting and to watch for severe weather such as thunderstorms, tornadoes, winter storms, precipitation types, etc. Geologists use specialised ground-penetrating radars to map the composition of the Earth's crust.
The military applications of radar were developed in secret in nations across the world during World War II. The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the U.S. Navy as an acronym for radio detection and ranging. The term radar has since entered the English and other languages as the common noun radar, losing all capitalization. In theUnited Kingdom, the technology was initially called RDF (range and direction finding), using the same initials used for radio direction finding to conceal its ranging capability..
The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air traffic control, radar astronomy, air-defense systems,antimissile systems; nautical radars to locate landmarks and other ships; aircraft anticollision systems; ocean-surveillance systems, outer-space surveillance ; meteorological precipitation monitoring; altimetry and flight-control systems; guided-missile target-locating systems; and ground-penetrating radar for geological observations. High tech radar systems are associated with digital signal processing and are capable of extracting objects from very high noise levels.
Other systems similar to radar have been used in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. One example is "lidar", which uses visible light from lasers rather than radio waves.
Several inventors, scientists, and engineers contributed to the development of radar.
As early as 1886, Heinrich Hertz showed that radio waves could be reflected from solid objects. In 1895 Alexander Popov, a physics instructor at the Imperial Russian Navy school in Kronstadt, developed an apparatus using a coherer tube for detecting distant lightning strikes. The next year, he added a spark-gap transmitter. During 1897, while testing this in communicating between two ships in the Baltic Sea, he took note of an interference beat caused by the passage of a third vessel. In his report, Popov wrote that this phenomenon might be used for detecting objects, but he did nothing more with this observation.
The German Christian Huelsmeyer was the first to use radio waves to detect "the presence of distant metallic objects". In 1904 he demonstrated the feasibility of detecting a ship in dense fog, but not its distance. He received Reichspatent Nr. 165546 for his detection device in April 1904, and later patent 169154 for a related amendment for also determining the distance to the ship. He also received a British patent on September 23, 1904 for the first full Radar application, which he called telemobiloscope.
In August 1917 Nikola Tesla outlined a concept for primitive radar units. He stated, by their [standing electromagnetic waves]use we may produce at will, from a sending station, an electrical effect in any particular region of the globe; [with which] we may determine the relative position or course of a moving object, such as a vessel at sea, the distance traversed by the same, or its speed."
In 1922 A. Hoyt Taylor and Leo C. Young, researchers working with the U.S. Navy, discovered that when radio waves were broadcast at 60 MHz it was possible to determine the range and bearing of nearby ships in the Potomac River. Despite Taylor's suggestion that this method could be used in darkness and low visibility, the Navy did not immediately continue the work. Serious investigation began eight years later after the discovery that radar could be used to track airplanes.
Before the Second World War, researchers in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States, independently and in great secrecy, developed technologies that led to the modern version of radar.Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa followed prewar Great Britain, and Hungary had similar developments during the war.
In 1934 the Frenchman Émile Girardeau stated he was building an obstacle-locating radio apparatus "conceived according to the principles stated by Tesla" and obtained a patent (French Patent n° 788795 in 1934) for a working system. A part of which was installed on the Normandie liner in 1935.
During the same year, the Soviet military engineer P.K.Oschepkov, in collaboration with Leningrad Electrophysical Institute, produced an experimental apparatus, RAPID, capable of detecting an aircraft within 3 km of a receiver.The French and Soviet systems, however, had continuous-wave operation and could not give the full performance that was ultimately at the center of modern radar.
Full radar evolved as a pulsed system, and the first such elementary apparatus was demonstrated in December 1934 by the American Robert M. Page, working at the Naval Research Laboratory. The year after the US Army successfully tested a primitive surface to surface radar to aim coastal battery search lights at night. This was followed by a pulsed system demonstrated in May 1935 by Rudolf Kühnhold and the firm GEMA in Germany and then one in June 1935 by an Air Ministry team led byRobert A. Watson Watt in Great Britain. Later, in 1943, Page greatly improved radar with themonopulse technique that was then used for many years in most radar applications.
The British were the first to fully exploit radar as a defence against aircraft attack. This was spurred on by fears that the Germans were developing death rays. The Air Ministry asked British scientists in 1934 to investigate the possibility of propagating electromagnetic energy and the likely effect. Following a study, they concluded that a death ray was impractical but that detection of aircraft appeared feasible. Robert Watson Watt's team demonstrated to his superiors the capabilities of a working prototype and then patented the device (British Patent GB593017).It served as the basis for the Chain Home network of radars to defend Great Britain. In April 1940, Popular Science showed an example of a radar unit using the Watson-Watt patent in an article on air defence, but not knowing that the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy were working on radars with the same principle, stated under the illustration, "This is not U.S. Army equipment." Also, in late 1941 Popular Mechanics had an article in which a US scientist conjured what he believed the British early warning system on the English east coast most likely looked like and was very close to what it actually was and how it worked in principle.
The war precipitated research to find better resolution, more portability, and more features for radar, including complementary navigation systems like Oboe used by the RAF's Pathfinder. The postwar years have seen the use of radar in fields as diverse as air traffic control, weather monitoring,astrometry, and road speed control.
Applications:-
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| Distance measurement |
The information provided by radar includes the bearing and range (and therefore position) of the object from the radar scanner. It is thus used in many different fields where the need for such positioning is crucial. The first use of radar was for military purposes: to locate air, ground and sea targets. This evolved in the civilian field into applications for aircraft, ships, and roads.
In aviation, aircraft are equipped with radar devices that warn of obstacles in or approaching their path and give accurate altitude readings. The first commercial device fitted to aircraft was a 1938 Bell Lab unit on some United Air Lines aircraft. They can land in fog at airports equipped with radar-assisted ground-controlled approach(GCA) systems, in which the plane's flight is observed on radar screens while operators radio landing directions to the pilot.
Marine radars are used to measure the bearing and distance of ships to prevent collision with other ships, to navigate and to fix their position at sea when within range of shore or other fixed references such as islands, buoys, and lightships. In port or in harbour, vessel traffic service radar systems are used to monitor and regulate ship movements in busy waters. Police forces use radar guns to monitor vehicle speeds on the roads.
Meteorologists use radar to monitor precipitation. It has become the primary tool for short-term weather forecasting and to watch for severe weather such as thunderstorms, tornadoes, winter storms, precipitation types, etc. Geologists use specialised ground-penetrating radars to map the composition of the Earth's crust.
