Indian AESA Radar Developments

@Gautam, are you sure about the frequency band of TSA developed by India? It has lit up my eyes. It will take us directly to the technology which allows us to use the radar itself as a huge jammer.
 
@Gautam, are you sure about the frequency band of TSA developed by India? It has lit up my eyes. It will take us directly to the technology which allows us to use the radar itself as a huge jammer.
Quite certain about the frequency. There are plans to make jammers for LCA, Su-30 and AMCA with these. With the LCA and Su-30 there will be podded jammers. But with AMCA it will be internally integrated and made body flush. Plans were to place it inside the slat of the AMCA and also below the cockpit.

The podded solutions fro the LCA and Su-30 are jammers only but for AMCA these will also function as dispersed radars to improve situational awareness.
 
Quite certain about the frequency. There are plans to make jammers for LCA, Su-30 and AMCA with these. With the LCA and Su-30 there will be podded jammers. But with AMCA it will be internally integrated and made body flush. Plans were to place it inside the slat of the AMCA and also below the cockpit.

The podded solutions fro the LCA and Su-30 are jammers only but for AMCA these will also function as dispersed radars to improve situational awareness.
This actually opens a whole lot of options for us. Such a large frequency band allows us to even have elements within the leading edge of vertical stabilisers to get very accurate height information of the target and also use that info to either go further forward to get out of view angle of enemy radar and yet shoot down the target from a very large height at which stealth aircraft are supposed to fly or remain at very large range and guide the missile very accurately to the target to deny the target the ability to escape the radar lock of the missile by vertical or horizontal exit by varing the speed and altitude. But to generate such data we will need very high computing power and I do not see any such supercomputer for use in aircraft coming from Indian research organisations. No missile seeker radar operates within this frequency band as today. So we will have radar jamming and radar guidance working together, without limiting the performance of either.
 
I did.

This is more recent. The Astra's doppler radar began development in around 2015. The TSA based AESA began development in late 2018. Let me attach a recent thing I posted on twitter to make things clearer.


Compare the TRMs shown in the tweet with those in the second photo you attached or just notice the configuration type of the two radars in the second pic. You will notice they are exactly the same. This is very significant yet most of the defence community in India will simply brush it apart for lack of understanding. A Vivaldi based AESA is essentially the next generation of AESA radar. So in terms of missile seekers this is 2 generations apart from what is currently abundantly used.

A Doppler radar has a flat plate on top. that plate is both the transmitter and the receiver. Thus a doppler radar has just one Transmitter Receiver Module(TRM). A single TRM can produce only a single frequency of EM waves and can thus be easily jammed. To reduce the chances of being jammed the Phased Doppler Radar(PDR) was made. These radars can cope with a change in input power and polarity of the current, with those changes the radar can produce a range of EM waves with in some limits. Thus jamming them is a lot more difficult.

Still problems remained, the PDRs can produce EM waves with in a very limited band width. With the improvement of jamming tech this is becoming inadequate. Thus we can see a movement towards the AESA based seekers. AESA radars have not one but a large number of TRMs, that what gives it the distinctive porcupine like appearance.

Photos for example.
PDR :
View attachment 16108
AESA :
View attachment 16109

The benefits of the AESA over other are obvious and pretty well known. With the AESA radars there is a constant competition for mounting more and more TRMs. More the number of TRMs, more difficult it is evade the radar, more difficult it is to jam the radar and so on. But with more TRMs we need more power, both electrical and computing power.

This is where the TSA comes in. With the TSA, every TRM has 2 transmitters and 2 receivers instead of just one each. Thus by simply using the TSA based TRMs we can double the number of transmitters and receivers than before with in the same space. There will be an increase in power, but it will be a marginal increase not double as we would have otherwise. The cooling requirement will also go up marginally but not substantially. Overall, the TSA based AESA is the future of AESA radars.

This is what I meant by 2 generations apart. In radar tech first came the DR, then PDR, then PESA, then AESA and now we are headed for TSA based AESA. But in missile seekers we are going directly from PDRs to TSA based AESA, skipping both PESA and regular AESA.

But, as always, there are problems. Placing that many transmitters so close to each other will most certainly form a large number of constructive and destructive interference. Thus the resultant waveform of a TSA based radar will be different from a normal AESA radar. The only way to properly understand and map them is by trial and error, only then can we begin writing the codes for the radar to have different scanning modes. This is where we are now, trial and error.


Notice the flat plate ? Its is not a AESA fro sure. I don't know what it is for. But if I were to guess I would say seeker for a SAM of some kind.


For now the chances are very slim. The Vivaldi/TSA based TRMs need much testing. Give it a few years.
Its an incredible post, informative....
 
Quite certain about the frequency. There are plans to make jammers for LCA, Su-30 and AMCA with these. With the LCA and Su-30 there will be podded jammers. But with AMCA it will be internally integrated and made body flush. Plans were to place it inside the slat of the AMCA and also below the cockpit.

The podded solutions fro the LCA and Su-30 are jammers only but for AMCA these will also function as dispersed radars to improve situational awareness.
what is the status and advantages of ultra wide band radar? can u shed some light on shared aperture radar?
 
what is the status and advantages of ultra wide band radar? can u shed some light on shared aperture radar?
Shared aperture radars are those that use a single radiating element to produce more than one EM wave. By traditional definition, a transmitter produces only one EM wave at one time. As electronics matured transmitters and receivers were physically mated together to save space. This is called a Transmitter Receiver Module(TRM). But the traditional rule still applied. One TRM can produce only one EM wave at one time. But a shared aperture TRM doesn't follow that rule. Here a single TRM produces more than one EM wave at one time. Thus it is called "shared", as it appears as if multiple EM waves share the same radiating element. TSA elements are considered to be among the shared aperture radiating elements.

A wide band radar is exactly what the name suggest. A radar with a wide bandwidth of operation. As a simple thought experiment, assume that a radar produces "x" Hz as its lowest frequency and "y" Hz as its highest frequency. So (y-x) Hz gives you the bandwidth. Wider the bandwidth, more difficult it is to jam. That why they are preferred. An AESA radar will provide you a fairly large band on operations. But with shared aperture radars the bandwidth of operation become so big that the radar can work in multiple IEEE classified frequency bands. Imagine a radar having S band like scanning capability and X band like targeting capability and Ka band like jamming resistance. Ok that was a random flight of imagination. :p

It is difficult to imagine what kind of a radar it would be. That's what an ultra wide band radar is. We are still at exploratory phases of this tech. Trial and error until we establish a clear understanding of what it can be and what it can do. Still much way to go.

Read post #70 on page no: 4 of this thread. That is an informative article.
 
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DRDO-LRDE flying testbed FTB Do-228
 

this guy is a scientist at LRDE. The way he talks....it's hard to believe if he even knows anything about radars or the things he talk about. yet he has designed antenna pressurisation system for arudhra radar allegedly.
Listen from 2:55 onward.
he talks about push towards OTH capability by LRDE using space based radars. It was funny how he explained it but if it is true is this how they will engage target at longer ranges using SAM system like S-400 ?

@Gautam @Arpit @randomradio
@screambowl
 
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he talks about push towards OTH capability by LRDE using space based radars.

Its a SAR setup. Only transmitter is on ground and receiver in space.

These are radars to monitor ships and/or ground movements. Mostly costal radars. These can have MASSIVE range and SAR increases resolution.

[/QUOTE]
With the Chinese NOSS satellite trio flying in fixed formation, radar interferometry can be used to increase the resolution of the Chinese NOSS satellite receivers. The HF emitters are on the ground, but the receivers can be either on the ground or in space.
[/QUOTE]
 
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Uttam Ready

The home-grown Uttam Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar developed by Electronics & Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) seems to be making the right moves to get the attention of the Indian Air Force (IAF).

With the addition of AESA radar being one of the key features of Tejas MK1A, LRDE hopes that Uttam can even meet the schedules of the upgraded programme

uttam-ready



It has already completed more than 100 hours of flying on a hired aircraft and nearly 25 hours on Tejas test platforms. It is now confirmed that Uttam’s air-to-air mode and its sub-mode functionalities have been already tested.

Uttam is in competition with the Israeli Elta radar and the official word is not yet out on the question of how many Tejas MK1As (total 83) will be fitted with the desi technology.

LRDE scientists are pinning their hopes on the Aatmanirbhar Bharat mandate.
 
Uttam Ready

The home-grown Uttam Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar developed by Electronics & Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) seems to be making the right moves to get the attention of the Indian Air Force (IAF).

With the addition of AESA radar being one of the key features of Tejas MK1A, LRDE hopes that Uttam can even meet the schedules of the upgraded programme

uttam-ready



It has already completed more than 100 hours of flying on a hired aircraft and nearly 25 hours on Tejas test platforms. It is now confirmed that Uttam’s air-to-air mode and its sub-mode functionalities have been already tested.

Uttam is in competition with the Israeli Elta radar and the official word is not yet out on the question of how many Tejas MK1As (total 83) will be fitted with the desi technology.

LRDE scientists are pinning their hopes on the Aatmanirbhar Bharat mandate.

LRDE should give a date on which it can deliver fully certified version , till that date whatever number of MK1A HAL plans to build, we should buy those many 2052.
 
LRDE should give a date on which it can deliver fully certified version , till that date whatever number of MK1A HAL plans to build, we should buy those many 2052.

It will take 3 more years atleast

And Mk1 A production will start in 2023

So Uttam can be tried on some planes
To further improve its performance

And for MK 2 Uttam will be fully operational