Wind farm in radar systems: Modeling, analysis, simulations and possible countermeasures

The growing need for renewable energy sources has led to an increasing massive utilization of wind energy. Each year new wind farms (WFs) arise, consisting of wind turbines (WTs) bigger and bigger. WTs are a very complex source of radar clutter to characterize and have an impact on air traffic control particularly difficult to mitigate. They often turn out to be electrically enormous structures, able to either re-irradiate a significant portion of the radar energy, and, because of blades motion, give rise to a Doppler effect very similar to that due to a flying airplane. One of the assertions in favor of wind power is that WFs are operative in almost all weather conditions, so that very slow winds are enough to make wind blades move. In Figure 1 two examples of installations of land and an off-shore WFs are shown.