Research on marine solid state radar and its application

Despite the fact that nearly all the civil ships use the pulse radar with magnetron and it plays an important role in ship navigation and collision avoidance, some demerits exist, such as about 3-min to warm up, high power transmission, blind area at short-range, the limited life of magnetron, limited target resolution, etc. With the advent of the civil solid state radar system which adopts advanced technology (Pulse Compression, Coherent Signal Processing Technology, Clutter Suppression Technology, Doppler Processing Technology, Interference Suppression Technology, etc.), these demerits have been conquered. The benefits of solid state radar include high target detection performance, no tuning and pre-heating, low-power transmission, better clutter processing, the better resolution and target discrimination, small weight and size, high reliability, low maintenance cost, etc. Based on the merits of solid state radar, this paper illustrates three typical applications on marine field: the pirate craft detection, the collision avoidance application in inland river or estuary, and as the VTS and coastal surveillance Radar.