Smart repeater for radar testing

One of the critical items in radar testing is the ability to perform an end-to-end test. This is frequently accomplished by the use of a standard target-a corner reflector or a repeater. In the case of a weapon location radar such as the European Counter (CO) Battery (B) Radar (RA) (COBRA) or the US AN/TPQ-36 and AN/TPQ-37, this is complicated by the desire to emulate the ballistic trajectory of a shell in flight. Technology Service Corporation (TSC) has developed a smart repeater that uses a long vertical antenna to simulate the vertical trajectory along with sophisticated software to represent the Doppler, range and amplitude changes during the flight. The most recent of these smart repeaters was developed for the COBRA system and is described in this paper.