This book is a practitioner's guide to all aspects of pulse Doppler radar. It concentrates on airborne military radar systems since they are the most used, most complex, and most interesting of the pulse Doppler radars; however, ground-based and non-military systems are also included.

It covers the fundamental science, signal processing, hardware issues, systems design and case studies of typical systems. It will be a useful resource for engineers of all types (hardware, software and systems), academics, post-graduate students, scientists in radar and radar electronic warfare sectors and military staff. Case studies add interest and credibility by illustrating how and where the ideas presented within the book work in real life.

This book is an important reference providing complete and up-to-date coverage of a significant area of radar technology and is an important source for engineers and academics who lecture this subject.

KEY FEATURES
Medium PRF waveform design and analysis including:
* Methods of selection of precise PRF values,
* PRF schedule design,
* Strategies to combat the ghosting problem,
* Minimize range/velocity blindness and minimize dwell time.
* Case studies on generic radar types such as airborne fire control radar, airborne early warning radar, active radar missile seekers and air defense radars.

1. Basic Concepts
Radar Detection Performance
Processing Gain and Loss
Pulsed Radar
Pulse Delay Ranging, Range Gating, Minimum Range Doppler Radar
Limitation and Applications of CW Radar
The Sampled Doppler Cycle of Pulsed Radar
Low PRF Radar Response to Clutter

2. Radar Hardware
Transmitters
Frequency Synthesis
Direct Synthesis
Indirect Synthesis Using Phase Locked Loops
Direct Digital Synthesis
Hybrid Methods
The Importance of Phase Coherency
The Significance of Close to Carrier Noise
Typical Superheterodyne Receiver

3: Pulse Doppler Processing
The processing chain
FFT processing
Other elements of the processing chain
Platform motion compensation in airborne radar

4: High PRF Pulse Doppler Radar
The Doppler band
High PRF response to surface clutter
Eclipsing
Eclipsing losses
Applications

5: FMICW Ranging in High PRF
FM ranging concept
Three phase linear FMICW
Sine FM Ranging
Use in range tracking

6: Introduction to Medium PRF
Basic Concepts
M of N detection and decodability thresholding
Ambiguities
Range/velocity detection space of interest (instrumented range/velocity)
Response to surface clutter
Blindness
Multiple PRF operation

7: Factors Affecting the Choice of PRFs
Decodability
Blindness
Ghosting
Combating ghost tracks using multiple schedules
Skyline diagrams, range and velocity decodability margins
Target extraction algorithm
Maximum PRF constraints
Minimum PRF constraints
Mean PRF

8: Medium PRF Schedule Design
Selection of M and N
Non-coherent integration

9: Detection Performance
Detection performance
CFAR

10: Methods of PRF Selection
PRF Selection for maximum visibility
Major/Minor method
M:N method
Optimisation using Evolutionary Algorithms (EA)

11: Case Studies
Airborne Fire Control Radars
Airborne Early Warning Radars
Active Radar Missile Seekers
Ground Based Air Defense Radar

Clive Alabaster is a Lecturer in the Department of Informatics and Systems Engineering at Cranfield University, UK. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Cranfield in 2004.

In 1985, after receiving his BSc, he joined GEC-Marconi in the microwave design group of the airborne radar division. He worked as a design and development engineer on the microwave synthesizer and front end receiver design of an airborne intercept radar fitted to a fast-strike aircraft. In 1992 he worked for Serco as a lecturer in radar and microwave engineering at the School of Electrical and Aeronautical Engineering, Arborfield Garrison, UK where he taught technicians of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Corps.

Alabaster joined the academic staff at Cranfield University in 1998. In 2001 he established a research program for medium PRF pulse Doppler waveforms, which has won several applied research contracts with industry and defense organizations.