VOLUME SURVEILLANCE RADAR FREQUENCY SELECTION
Dx Robert J. Galejs, MIT Lincoln Luboratory, Lexington, MA, USA
Abstract
The US Navy developed the volume surveillance radar
concept to fill the need for voIume surveillance in future
non-AEGIS ships. This new radar is envisioned as a low-
cost replacement for the SPS-48/49 radars. A phased array
architecture is desirable for flexibility, ship integration ease
and ship signature goals.
This paper discusses the many trade-offs one must
consider when deciding on the frequency choice for a vol-
ume surveillance radar. Some considerations favor higher
frequencies and some favor lower frequencies and depend-
ing on how one weights these factors, different conclusions
can be made as to the “optimum” frequency choice.
The frequency choice in this instance was driven by
three main factors: cost, pulse repetition frequency (PRF)
selection and beamwidth. The trade-off between these fac-
tors resulted in L-band as the preferred frequency.
Assumptions
For the purposes of this frequency trade, it was
assumed that radars at all frequencies would be 4-faced
active phased arrays. In order to keep costs down, only low-
cost T/R module designs (roughly US$lk/module) were
considered. Since power amplifier cost is a major contribu-
tor to the module cost, this assumption results in consider-
ation only of power levels consistent with a single amplifier
in the final amplification stage.
The radar designs considered here all have free-space
sensitivities equal to that of a 16 kW 10 m2 L-band array.
For frequencies above L-band, this restriction amounts to
having constant power-aperture (PA) product. Below L-
band, the PA product is allowed to go down due to the
assumption of an enhanced radar cross section (RCS) in
this regime. The arrays that result will be compared with a
variety of measures of performance.
The basic requirements that this volume surveillance
radar must meet are as follows: A detection range of 75 km
is desired -with an instrumented range of 460 km. Noise
limited performance is desired in the littoral environment,
This work was sponsored by the United States Navy under Air Force Contract FI 9628-95-C-0002. Opinions, interpretations. conclusions
and recommendations are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Air Force or United States Navy.
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0-7803-5776-O/OO/$lO.OO
stressing the clutter and interference rejection capabilities
of these radars. Bandwidth requirements are very modest at
1 MHz, if no missions other than volume surveillance are
required. Very low life-cycle costs are desired as well.
In order to size the radars across frequency, an assump-
tion must be made as to the T/R module output power.
Table 1 outlines the T/R module power levels assumed.
These powers are based on readily available commercial-
off-the-shelf (COTS) components. Advances continue to be
made in this area and this table will likely soon be out of
date. However, the important factor, as far as frequency
trades go, is that the average power of the assumed T/R
modules scales as llfrequency.
Figure 1 illustrates the RCS assumptions mentioned
above. The RCS is assumed to be constant above 1 GHz
and to rise as 1/f2 below 1 GHz.
A further assumption is made that the radar noise fig-
ure plus losses is constant across frequency. This is cer-
tainly not an exact assumption but small differences in
sensitivity will not ultimately decide what frequency band
is best.
Compiling all of the preceding assumptions into a
radar size is done in Table 2. Here it is shown that the PA
product is constant for frequencies above 1 GHz and
reduced at lower frequencies due to the target RCS. The
radar size peaks at 10 m2 at 1 GHz and falls at both higher
and lower frequencies.
Frequency Selection Factors
There are several factors that favor lower frequency
operation. These include: cost, PRF choice for clutter rejec-
tion, atmospheric and rain attenuation and rain clutter. Of
these, cost and PRF selection are of critical importance,
attenuation is very important and rain clutter is of lower
importance.
There are also several factors which favor higher fre-
quency. These include beamwidth, land clutter and band-
width. Of these three, beamwidth is of critical importance
while the others are of lower importance.
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 Module Cost
Total radar costs are very hard to quantify, so only the
contribution from T/R modules is considered. Under the
assumptions of fully populated 4-face active arrays, the
number of T/R modules is easily found. Under the low-cost
T/R module assumption of US$lOOO per module, the total
module cost is easily found. This cost is plotted in Figure 2.
In order to make some decisions about which frequen-
cies are preferable over others, some thresholds must be
defined. In this case, it was desired for the total cost of the
volume surveillance radar to be below US$lOM. If the
module cost exceeded half of the total cost, that was judged
to be “unacceptable”. If it fell to 20% of the total cost, that
was judged to be “very good.” Between these limits was
”acceptable.” The frequencies at which these thresholds are
crossed are indicated with dashed vertical lines. Thus, one
sees that above 2 GHz, module cost becomes excessive and
below 1 GHz it is easily affordable.
PRF Selection
There are many considerations which influence the
choice of PRF. First, there is the desire to maintain a rela-
tively large unambiguous velocity to restrict the region
where rain and bird clutter exists to roughly 25% of the
unambiguous Doppler space. This yields a limit of approxi-
mately 200 m/s as the minimum acceptable velocity ambi-
guity. This restriction amounts to a requirement that the
PRF grows linearly with frequency. In addition, a relatively
large number of pulses per coherent processing interval are
desired (8 in this case) to allow adequate Doppler filtering.
This yields a PRF requirement that varies as f2/A where A
is the antenna area. The highest PRF requirement of these
two is plotted vs. frequency in Figure 3. The slope disconti-
nuity at 2.5 GHz is the crossover between these two
requirements.
To establish thresholds in this situation, consider the
effects of range ambiguities. If the unambiguous range
exceeds the instrumented range, then there are no clutter
folding effects to consider at any range. PRFs that meet this
requirement are considered “very good.” If the unambigu-
ous range exceeds the 75 km detection range, then there are
no clutter folding effects out to the desired detection range.
This is termed “acceptable.” When the ambiguous range
becomes shorter, near-in clutter starts to compete with tar-
gets within the required detection range, dramatically
increasing the required clutter rejection requirements
(roughly 25 dB here). This is “unacceptable.” Above 1.5
GHz is “unacceptable” and below 250 MHz is “very good.”
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Atmospheric and Rain Attenuation
Atmospheric and rain attenuation become significant
only at relatively high frequencies. Figure 4 plots atmo-,
spheric and rain attenuation due to oxygen and water vapor.
At L-band and higher, 0 2 absorption is nearly constant and
water vapor absorption only becomes significant at X-band.
Nearly all frequencies are “acceptable,” while frequencies
below 1 GHz are “very good.”
Figure 5 plots rain attenuation for rain rates of 1,4 and
16 mm/hr. Rain attenuation is not significant below C-band.
Thus, frequencies below 5 GHz are judged to be “very
good,” 5-7 GHz are “acceptable” and above 7 GHz is
“unacceptable.”
Clutter Levels
Figure 6 plots the single pulse clutter levels due to rain and
land vs. frequency. Rain clutter dramatically increases at
higher frequencies but is overwhelmed by the land clutter
requirement. The land clutter decreases slightly with fre-
quency but is not significant enough to distinguish between
frequency bands. All frequencies are “acceptable” when
considering single pulse clutter returns.
Beamwidth
The beamwidth of the radar as outlined in the introduc-
tion is plotted in Figure 7. The beamwidth decreases with
increasing frequency from about 5 degrees at 1 GHz down
to about 1 degree at 10 GHz and increases dramatically to
15 degrees at UHF. A smaller beamwidth has many advan-
tages: It allows accurate handover to a fire control radar,
reduces vulnerability to main beam jamming of the radar
and enhances elevation estimation for low altitude targets in
multipath.
Figure 8 plots the number of 2’ fire control radar
(FCR) beams required to search the handover uncertainty
from the surveillance radar to achieve a high-confidence
handover of 95%.The best one can achieve is a single beam
handover which occurs above 900 MHz, the “very good”
region. Only a few beams are required down to UHF.
Below UHF is “unacceptable”.
Figure 9 plots the angle off of boresite that a 1 kW/
MHz jammer at 100 km range causes a 25 dB jammer to
noise ratio in the radar. The thresholds for this measure of
performance are likely to be the most controversial. I took
the relatively modest threshold of 5 degrees as the “very
good” point and 10 degrees as “unacceptable”. This results
in the acceptable region spanning from 800 MHz to 2 GHz.
In many situations, a 20 degree jammed sector would likely Figures
be “unacceptable”, but that was chosen here. If a much
smaller jammed sector was desired and this factor weighed
heavily in the frequency choice decision, then perhaps
higher frequencies would be chosen as optimum.
15
When a low altitude target is being tracked, multipath
errors will corrupt the elevation information about that tar-
10
get. To illustrate the point, a simple model of a target flying
level at 1000 m above the ocean with a 0.15 m RMS wave-
height is shown in Figure 10. A flat Earth was assumed 5
with a radar height of 15 m. The maximum elevation bias at
any range is plotted vs. frequency. When that bias exceeds 0
the FCR beamwidth of 2 degrees, it was deemed “unaccept-
able.” This occurs below 800 MHz. “Very good” perfor- -5
mance is found at 2 GHz and up. 0.1 1.o 10.0
Frequency (GHz)
Bandwidth
Figure 1. Target RCS Assumptions
As the radar frequency increases, the available band-
width in radar bands generally increases as well. However,
since the bandwidth requirement is quite minimal at 1
MHz, all frequency bands have adequate bandwidth for the
volume surveillance radar. The NTIAl-allocated radar

1 1
10
bandwidths are plotted in Figure 11 to illustrate this point. JlOOOlmodlrle

Summary *
Fully Populated Aperture
ConstamFrsaSpace
Search Sensitivity
1
-$ 6 I I
One can see from all of the plots presented so far that
there is no radar frequency that allows performance in the
“very good” regime for all selection factors. Thus, rather
than maximizing the good aspects, one is left with the case
of minimizing the bad. Figure 12 plots the “unacceptable”
regions for the 6 most important factors considered: elec- 0.1 1.o 10.0
tronic countermeasures (ECM),cost, handover, clutter Frequency (GHz)
rejection, multipath bias and rain attenuation. The volume
surveillance radar frequency should not be higher than L- Figure 2. T/RModule Cost
band due to module cost and clutter rejection consider-
ations. Below L-band, the radar beamwidth becomes very
large. One can see from this figure that L-band is a reason-
able compromise between many competing factors for a
volume surveillance radar.

1. National Telecommunications and Information Admin-

istration.

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 Unacceptable

Frequency (GHz)
0.1 1.o 10.0
Frequency (GHz)
Figure 5. Rain Attenuation
Figure 3. PRF Requirements

0.1
6or=====l
40 L

AcceDtable
20 -

__ -
0.1 1.o 10.0
Frequency (GHz)

Figure 6. Clutter Levels

Figure 4. Atmospheric Attenuation

20

15 - Search Sensitivity -

10 -
5 -

,- ..
0
0.1 1.o 10.0
Frequency (GHz)

Figure 7. Beamwidth

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 10000
From NTlA 1996 US Frequency Allocation Cha
Radiolocation Bands

Frequency(GHz) Frequency (GHz)

Figure 8. Handover to Fire Control Figure 11. Frequency Bands Allocated to Radar

h Handover

Multipath Bias
Clutter

0.1 1.o 10.0

Frequency (GHz)

Figure 12. Frequency Trade Summary

0.1 1 .o 10.0
Frequency (GHz)

Figure 9. Jammed Sector

Frequency (GHz)

Figure 10. Multipath Elevation Bias

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 Tables
TABLE 1. T/RModule Power Assumptions

I UHF I L-Band I S-Band I C-Band I X-Band I

I Peak I 1000 I 180 I 83 I 50 I 10 1
Power (W)
Duty 0.06 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.25
Factor
I I
Average 60 18 8.3 5 2.5
Power (W)
~~ ~~ ~

TABLE 2. Radar Sizing

UHF L-Band S-Band C-Band X-Band

Number of modules per m2 87 400 1111 4444

Antenna Area (m2) 8.0 10.0 6.8 5.3 3.7

Power Aperture (kWm2) 35 160 160 160 160

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