Simulation And Visualization Of Radar Detection Range Under Complex Terrain Circumstances

As a very important combat unit, radar is one of the essential elements in the modern war.To achieve hostile aircraft early warning, missile deployment and proper battlefield command,it is of great significance to gather full information of radar detection range in praticalenvironment that involves complex terrain. The detection range of a radar is influenced bytwo factors, not only the type and emitting power of the radar itself, but the interference of theterrain and atmosphere along the propagating path as well. This article focus on the correctionof the radar detecting range under complex terrain circumstances.In this paper, a fast computing method is proposed to simulate the detection area of aradar, using shooting and bouncing rays algorithm, according to the practical terrain and radarparameters, and the result is rendered in the form of horizontal detection range figure. Ageometric model of multipath relflection is built for the radar set up on the earth surface, sothat the expression of radar echo signal power under multipath circumstances can be derived,from the concept of radiation pattern propagation factor. We introduced several parameters toindicate the effect of terrain characteristics on the relflected wave: roughness factor to indicatethe randomness of the surface, and its effect on the electromagnetic scattering; divergentfactor to indicate the divergence effect of curved surface on the reflected wave; and surfacevegetation factor to indicate the extent of attenuation of reflection coefficient as a result of theplant covering. The input data of this method is the standard DEM3-D terrain data, which ismarked by latitudes and longitudes. The first step is to transform these data to the polar scalewhich is centerd by the radar set up on the mountain, and to smooth all the sampling points along each direction with the cubic spline fitting. Find out the effective reflecting points, andget the correction factor by comparing the direct electric field and the overall field, thusdecide the detection distance after considering the effect of terrain. Some engineeringapproximation methods are used to promote efficiency, while keeping computing accuracy. Atlast, a horizontal detection range is visualized to render simulating result.