Solid State X-Band Airport Surface Surveillance Radar

Raytheon has developed a new solid state transmitter for a low cost airport surface detection system. The transmitter as part of a low cost transceiver became the heart of the Federal Aviation Administration's Airport Surface Detection Equipment -Model X (ASDE-X) system. The all weather performance of the system was helped by a unique constant false alarm rate (CFAR) algorithm that was introduced to deal with the high rain returns on runways. This paper discusses the Raytheon ASDE-X transceiver and the new local area CFAR.