A description of a computer model to assess the effect of rotating rotor blades on the performance of a helicopter mounted pulse Doppler radar

The processing in a pulse Doppler airborne radar must be able to detect moving targets in the presence of clutter which may be spread over a wide Doppler frequency range due to returns through the antenna sidelobes. When such a radar is mounted in a helicopter, it is important to assess whether the Doppler spread and magnitude of the clutter returns will be significantly increased due to reflections from the rotor blades. The author describes the design and implementation of a computer model which enables the magnitude of the expected rotor induced clutter to be estimated