Advantages of Surveillance Radar,disadvantages of Surveillance Radar
This page covers advantages and disadvantages of Surveillance Radar. It mentions Surveillance Radar advantages or benefits and Surveillance Radar disadvantages or drawbacks. It also describes surveillance radar basics.
What is Surveillance Radar?
Introduction:
The surveillance radar scans radiation beam continuously over specified volume in space in order to
search the target.
Hence it is called Search radar.

The Surveillance radar determines range, angular position and target velocity. The beam is steered both in azimuth direction and elevation direction in this radar. The search volume is indicated by solid angle (Ω) as shown in the figure-1 above.
There are two main types of surveillance radars viz. primary surveillance radar (PSR) and secondary surveillance radar (SSR). They have their own respective advantages and disadvantages.
Benefits or advantages of Surveillance Radar
Following are the benefits or advantages of Surveillance Radar:
➨It uses large beamwidth in elevation and has stacked beams in azimuth.
➨It is used for pick up of long distance targets. It can detect aircraft from distance of about 400 Km.
➨It is high power radar in the range from hundreds of KWatts to several MWatts.
➨It has fan shaped beam which can search larger volume of space in very short time duration.
Moreover beam can be steered both in azimuth and elevation.
Hence it is also called as "Search Radar".
➨It can scan beams continuously.
➨It provides security against attacks at nights and in poor visibility
conditions.
➨It can detects targets and determines ranges.
➨It maintains 360 degrees of surveillance from surface to high altitudes.
➨It determines bearings of the targets in larger area.
➨SSR detects aircrafts and also provides altitude and identity.
Drawbacks or disadvantages of Surveillance Radar
Following are the disadvantages of Surveillance Radar:
➨It requires huge antenna and transmitting section as well as receiving section.
Hence it can only be used as static radar and it is strategically located.
➨High power, clutter and identification are the main drawbacks of
Primary Surveillance Radar (PSR). These are overcome by Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR).
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