Astor radar solution

Citation

(1999), "Astor radar solution", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 71 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.1999.12771aad.008

Astor radar solution

Astor radar solution

Keywords Racal, Radar

Racal presented its Airborne Stand OffRadar (ASTOR) for the first time at Farnborough '98. The radar, featuring an active phased array antenna, has been developed by Racal to meet the specific needs of the UK MoD for tri-service long range stand-off surface surveillance. The UK-designed radar is fully compliant to the ASTOR requirements providing both synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and moving target indicator (MTI) modes. In MTI mode the radar detects moving vehicles down to very low velocities and with high positional accuracy, while in SAR mode the radar provides high-resolution imagery of stationary objects and buildings. Both modes provide high quality surveillance out to very long ranges and over wide areas.

Carried by a Gulfstream V high performance business jet, the most striking feature of the radar is the long antenna housed inside a radome on the forward underside of the fuselage. The antenna is constructed from a large amount of active transmit/receive (T/R) modules, individually controlled to provide variable beam patterns and to steer the beam electronically in azimuth. Radio frequency (RF) sections are based on the company's Searchwater 2000 radar systems recently chosen for RAF Nimrod MRA4 and RN Sea King Mk7 AEW programmes. The radar makes extensive use of COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) equipment for signal and data processing.

For further information contact Racal Electronics plc. Tel: +44 (0) 1344 388065.