The photonic radar is attaining its popularity significantly for the last few years due to its potential to offer wide bandwidth to achieve an extended target-range with high range- and image-resolution [8-10]. On the other hand, the state-of-the-art microwave radar is incapable to meet these essential requirements of the self-driving vehicles due to its limited bandwidth. Moreover, to work at higher microwave-frequencies to attain high bandwidth, the microwave radar’s performance is affected by atmospheric fluctuations that result in short target-range. So, it becomes imperative to demonstrate and investigate a photonic radar that has the potential to achieve a prolonged target-range in harsh environment perceptions. Subsequently, the authors develop a model of linear frequency-modulated photonic radar to capture the reflected echoes with high power sufficient for target-detection with high accuracy using two simulation software, i.e. MatlabTM and OptisysTM. Further, the demonstrated photonic radar is developed and carried out under the influence of weak-to-strong atmospheric regimes. Our work determines how the weak-to-strong states of atmospheric fluctuations affect the demonstrated photonic radar and which detection strategy, either coherent or non-coherent, should be adopted to attain a prolonged target-range in the presence of harsh weather conditions. The results show better signal-to-noise ratio with high power of reflected echoes to achieve an extended target-range and are aligned in the acceptable ranges.