Reliability analysis for phased array radar systems

Phased array radar systems are used by the military for tracking targets and providing weapon engagement support. Each radar system consists of multiple antenna modules arranged in a 2-dimensional grid. An n-by-n antenna array radar system can operate with up to a given number of antenna module failures, with acceptable degraded performance, as long as the failed antennas are not adjacent to each other. In this paper, an improved RBD (Reliability Block Diagram) configuration is proposed to analyze the reliability for phased radar systems. Other reliability metrics such as point availability and mean availability also are evaluated.