The High Power Radar System TIRA

The Tracking & Imaging Radar (TIRA) system serves as the central experimental facility for the development and investigation of radar techniques for the detection and reconnaissance of objects in space, and to a certain degree also of air targets. Radar techniques, suited to space reconnaissance, are required for the verification of orbital systems, the assessment of the orbital debris situation and its physical characterisation as well as for risk assessment of reentering satellites.

The neccessary reconnaissance capabilities are established through high resolution in range and Doppler frequency, by radar image generation and interpretation, polarimetric techniques, and others. Specific problems in the signal processing are often caused by extreme target ranges, complex intrinsic target motion, and generally by insufficient models describing the scattering behaviour of targets.

The TIRA system gains radar data at 22.5 cm (L-band) and 1.8 cm (Ku-band) wavelengths. These form the data basis for the development of image and feature based classification and identification algorithms.

Based on radar data of space objects and techniques developed at RWA, characteristic target features like orbital elements, intrinsic motion parameters, orbital lifetime, target shape and size, ballistic coefficient, mass and material properties can be determined.

TIRA consists of three major subsystems:

• The antenna system with a 34-m parabolic reflector movable in azimuth and elevation,
• a narrowband, fully coherent monopulse tracking radar of high pulse power at L-band (1.333 GHz) frequency,
• and a wideband (currently 800 MHz) imaging radar at Ku-band frequency (16.7 GHz), allowing high target resolution.

All systems are under steady development due to the increasing reconnaissance capability demands.

 

 

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