Track-Beam Operation Strategy to Improve Track Maintenance Performance of Fighter AESA Radar

Abstract

An active electronically scanned array radar is able to radiate the search beam and track beam more independently than a mechanically scanned array radar. However, as the scan angle increases, the detection performance degrades; as a result, the track-on target could be lost due to scan loss. To overcome the degradation of the tracking performance for off-boresight targets, the effective track-beam operation strategy is proposed to compensate for the scan loss by increasing the dwell time. Because this strategy increases the frame time, which affects the detection performance of the radar system, the detection and track maintenance performance are analyzed systematically.