Radar
The position of the radar echoes depend heavily on the standard decrease of temperature hypothesis. However, the real atmosphere can vary greatly from the norm. Anomalous propagation refers to false radar echoes usually observed when calm, stable atmospheric conditions, often associated with super refraction in a temperature inversion, direct the radar beam toward the ground. The processing program will then wrongly place the return echoes at the height and distance it would have been in normal conditions. [4]
This type of false return is relatively easy to spot on a time loop if it is due to night cooling or marine inversion as one sees very strong echoes developing over an area, spreading in size laterally, not moving but varying greatly in intensity with time. After sunrise, the inversion disappears gradually and the area diminishes correspondingly. Inversion of temperature exists too ahead of warm fronts, and around thunderstorms' cold pool. Since precipitation exists in those circumstances, the abnormal propagation echoes are then mixed with real rain and/or targets of interest, which make them more difficult to separate.
Anomalous propagation is different from ground clutter, ocean reflections (sea clutter), biological returns from birds and insects, debris, chaff, sand storms, volcanic eruption plumes, and other non-precipitation meteorological phenomena. Ground and sea clutters are permanent reflection from fixed areas on the surface with stable reflective characteristics. Biological scatterers gives weak echoes over a large surface. These can vary in size with time but not much in intensity. Debris and chaff are transient and move in height with time. They are all indicating something actually there and either relevant to the radar operator and/or readily explicable and theoretically able to be reproduced.
Doppler radars and Pulse-Doppler radars are extracting the velocities of the targets. Since anomalous propagation comes from stable targets, it is possible to subtract the reflectivity data having a null speed and clean the radar images. Ground, sea clutter and the energy spike from the sun setting can be distinguished the same way but not other artifacts. [4] [5] This method is used in most modern radars, including air traffic control and weather radars.
The ionosphere is the ionized part of the upper atmosphere of Earth, from about 48 km (30 mi) to 965 km (600 mi) above sea level, a region that includes the thermosphere and parts of the mesosphere and exosphere. The ionosphere is ionized by solar radiation. It plays an important role in atmospheric electricity and forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere. It has practical importance because, among other functions, it influences radio propagation to distant places on Earth. It also affects GPS signals that travel through this layer.
Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (ranging), direction, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, map weather formations, and terrain.
In telecommunications, an atmospheric duct is a horizontal layer in the lower atmosphere in which the vertical refractive index gradients are such that radio signals are guided or ducted, tend to follow the curvature of the Earth, and experience less attenuation in the ducts than they would if the ducts were not present. The duct acts as an atmospheric dielectric waveguide and limits the spread of the wavefront to only the horizontal dimension.
The word duct is derived from the Latin word for led/leading. It may refer to:
In meteorology, an inversion is a phenomenon in which a layer of warmer air overlies cooler air. Normally, air temperature gradually decreases as altitude increases, but this relationship is reversed in an inversion.
Line-of-sight propagation is a characteristic of electromagnetic radiation or acoustic wave propagation which means waves can only travel in a direct visual path from the source to the receiver without obstacles. Electromagnetic transmission includes light emissions traveling in a straight line. The rays or waves may be diffracted, refracted, reflected, or absorbed by the atmosphere and obstructions with material and generally cannot travel over the horizon or behind obstacles.
The atmosphere of Earth is composed of a layer of gas mixture that surrounds the Earth's planetary surface, known collectively as air, with variable quantities of suspended aerosols and particulates, all retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere serves as a protective buffer between the Earth's surface and outer space, shields the surface from most meteoroids and ultraviolet solar radiation, keeps it warm and reduces diurnal temperature variation through heat retention, redistributes heat and moisture among different regions via air currents, and provides the chemical and climate conditions allowing life to exist and evolve on Earth.
Wind shear, sometimes referred to as wind gradient, is a difference in wind speed and/or direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere. Atmospheric wind shear is normally described as either vertical or horizontal wind shear. Vertical wind shear is a change in wind speed or direction with a change in altitude. Horizontal wind shear is a change in wind speed with a change in lateral position for a given altitude.
Radio propagation is the behavior of radio waves as they travel, or are propagated, from one point to another in vacuum, or into various parts of the atmosphere. As a form of electromagnetic radiation, like light waves, radio waves are affected by the phenomena of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption, polarization, and scattering. Understanding the effects of varying conditions on radio propagation has many practical applications, from choosing frequencies for amateur radio communications, international shortwave broadcasters, to designing reliable mobile telephone systems, to radio navigation, to operation of radar systems.
In radio communication, skywave or skip refers to the propagation of radio waves reflected or refracted back toward Earth from the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer of the upper atmosphere. Since it is not limited by the curvature of the Earth, skywave propagation can be used to communicate beyond the horizon, at intercontinental distances. It is mostly used in the shortwave frequency bands.
Super high frequency (SHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies (RF) in the range between 3 and 30 gigahertz (GHz). This band of frequencies is also known as the centimetre band or centimetre wave as the wavelengths range from one to ten centimetres. These frequencies fall within the microwave band, so radio waves with these frequencies are called microwaves. The small wavelength of microwaves allows them to be directed in narrow beams by aperture antennas such as parabolic dishes and horn antennas, so they are used for point-to-point communication and data links and for radar. This frequency range is used for most radar transmitters, wireless LANs, satellite communication, microwave radio relay links, satellite phones, and numerous short range terrestrial data links. They are also used for heating in industrial microwave heating, medical diathermy, microwave hyperthermy to treat cancer, and to cook food in microwave ovens.
Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar (WSR) and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, and estimate its type. Modern weather radars are mostly pulse-Doppler radars, capable of detecting the motion of rain droplets in addition to the intensity of the precipitation. Both types of data can be analyzed to determine the structure of storms and their potential to cause severe weather.
A pulse-Doppler radar is a radar system that determines the range to a target using pulse-timing techniques, and uses the Doppler effect of the returned signal to determine the target object's velocity. It combines the features of pulse radars and continuous-wave radars, which were formerly separate due to the complexity of the electronics.
Over-the-horizon radar (OTH), sometimes called beyond the horizon radar (BTH), is a type of radar system with the ability to detect targets at very long ranges, typically hundreds to thousands of kilometres, beyond the radar horizon, which is the distance limit for ordinary radar. Several OTH radar systems were deployed starting in the 1950s and 1960s as part of early-warning radar systems, but airborne early warning systems have generally replaced these. OTH radars have recently been making a comeback, as the need for accurate long-range tracking has become less important since the ending of the Cold War, and less-expensive ground-based radars are once again being considered for roles such as maritime reconnaissance and drug enforcement.
Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) radio propagation occurs outside of the typical line-of-sight (LOS) between the transmitter and receiver, such as in ground reflections. Near-line-of-sight conditions refer to partial obstruction by a physical object present in the innermost Fresnel zone.
The Earth–ionosphere waveguide is the phenomenon in which certain radio waves can propagate in the space between the ground and the boundary of the ionosphere. Because the ionosphere contains charged particles, it can behave as a conductor. The earth operates as a ground plane, and the resulting cavity behaves as a large waveguide.
Clutter is the unwanted return (echoes) in electronic systems, particularly in reference to radars. Such echoes are typically returned from ground, sea, rain, animals/insects, chaff and atmospheric turbulences, and can cause serious performance issues with radar systems. What one person considers to be unwanted clutter, another may consider to be a wanted target. However, targets usually refer to point scatterers and clutter to extended scatterers. The clutter may fill a volume or be confined to a surface. A knowledge of the volume or surface area illuminated is required to estimated the echo per unit volume, η, or echo per unit surface area, σ°.
This is an index to articles about terms used in discussion of radio propagation.
Tropospheric propagation describes electromagnetic propagation in relation to the troposphere. The service area from a VHF or UHF radio transmitter extends to just beyond the optical horizon, at which point signals start to rapidly reduce in strength. Viewers living in such a "deep fringe" reception area will notice that during certain conditions, weak signals normally masked by noise increase in signal strength to allow quality reception. Such conditions are related to the current state of the troposphere.
The radar horizon is a critical area of performance for aircraft detection systems, defined by the distance at which the radar beam rises enough above the Earth's surface to make detection of a target at the lowest level possible. It is associated with the low elevation region of performance, and its geometry depends on terrain, radar height, and signal processing. This concept is associated with the notions of radar shadow, the clutter zone, and the clear zone.
