Abstract
Most HF radars operate in a monostatic or quasi-monostatic configuration. The collocation of transmit and receive facilities simplifies testing and maintenance, reduces demands on communications networks, and enables the use of established and relatively straightforward signal processing and data interpretation techniques. Radars of this type are well-suited to missions such as current mapping, waveheight measurement, and the detection of ships and aircraft. The high scientific, defense, and economic value of the radar products is evident from the fact that hundreds of HF radars are presently in operation, the great majority of them relying on the surface wave mode of propagation, though some systems employ line-of-sight or skywave modalities. Yet, notwithstanding the versatility and proven capabilities of monostatic HF radars, there are some types of observations for which the monostatic geometry renders them less effective. In these cases, one must turn to more general radar configurations, including those that employ a multiplicity of propagation modalities to achieve the desired illumination, scattering selectivity, and echo reception. In this paper, we survey some of the considerations that arise with bistatic HF radar configurations, explore some of the missions for which they are optimal, and describe some practical techniques that can guide their design and deployment.
Highlights
Remote sensing of our geophysical environment by means of radio waves in the HF band is a truly global activity, with decametric radars operating in scores of countries, and on every continent [1]
Bistatic HF radars with very specific missions have been deployed since the 1960s, predominantly in defense applications, but the convenience of monostatic designs and the adequacy of their standard remote sensing products have tended to discourage wider adoption of bistatic configurations
We explore many of the issues that arise with bistatic HF radar configurations, basing our analysis on the formal radar process model presented
Summary
Remote sensing of our geophysical environment by means of radio waves in the HF band is a truly global activity, with decametric radars operating in scores of countries, and on every continent [1]. The overwhelming majority of these radars operate in the conventional monostatic configuration, with the transmitting and receiving systems collocated or closely spaced (the term quasi-monostatic is often used in this case) This simple geometry has obvious advantages in terms of cost, siting requirements, communications, maintenance, signal processing, and echo interpretation, and has been adopted by HF radars exploiting line-of-sight, surface wave, and skywave propagation modalities. All these considerations notwithstanding, in some circumstances, there can be compelling reasons to implement bistatic configurations, often defined as geometries in which the separation between transmitter and receiver is comparable with the range to the zones being interrogated.
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