Queueing Requirements in an Automatic Radar Target Detection System Operating with a Narrow Bandwidth Data Link

Automation of the radar target detection process for remotely located scanning radars in an air traffic control system results in a queueing requirement for target reports when the communication link transfer rate is less than that of the radar. To determine the nature of this queueing requirement, a systems model was developed which incorporates the effects of aircraft target spacing at random intervals, in flight corridors, and in close formation clusters. The entire system was simulated to determine the queueing statistics as a function of the target spacing parameters, the load, the total number of targets, and the mixture of different message lengths. Verification of the simulation for one case which used a simplified target location model with all targets randomly located was obtained by mathematical analysis. A comparison of the two types of target location models showed that the complex target location model created a queue whose mean and variance were significantly larger than that created by the simplified model with all targets randomly located.