The APAR multifunction radar - system overview

This paper presents some of the highlights of the active phased array radar (APAR), commissioned recently. Radar like the APAR offers a wide variety of capabilities that must be controlled efficiently in order to fully exploit the opportunities offered by the technology. The multi function capability leads to the need to compromise on the utilization of the time and energy budget of the radar. Careful design of the waveform to employ all features the radar may extract from the received video, good understanding of these features from a physical point of view and also thorough understanding of the operational benefit of capabilities must go together. The system design, system engineering and the detailed design and testing of APAR were planned such that lessons learned could be implemented without redesigning the radar. Future products, like SEAPAR, can be derived from APAR at (relatively) low cost