MonoPulse Tracking Radar

Introduction:

    Monopulse is another simultaneous technique for obtaining the target’s angular position and mainly used in high precision tracking radar applications. While comparing with conical and sequential lobing radar, monopulse radars are not susceptible to amplitude modulation jamming, and radar echo signals variation is also less. Thereby, monopulse tracking radars have been widely adopted in many important applications.

  
A radar not only recognizes the presence of target, but it determines the target location in range and in one or two angle co-ordinates, as it continues to observe target over time, the radar can provide the target’s trajectory or track and predict where it will be in future.

   Early tracking radars used a single time shared beam to track in two angles. These trackers which time share a single beam are known as either conical or sequential lobing trackers. Modern high precision tracking radars however, use the equivalent of four simultaneous beams to perform two dimensional tracking they are called simultaneous lobing trackers, of which the most popular is mono pulse.

   Monopulse radar is a radar system that compares the received signal from a single radar pulse against itself in order to compare the signal as seen in multiple directions, polarizations, or other differences. The most common form is an adaptation of conical scanning radar which compares the return from two directions to directly measure the location of the target. This avoids problems in decoding conventional conical scanning systems, which can be confused by rapid changes in signal strength. The system also makes jamming more difficult.