Perspectives of the use of high frequency radars on buoys

High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR) is an alternative to conventional microwave radar. It allows to detect boats at long distance, far beyond the horizon. As this type of radar, which works typically at 3 to 30 MHz, have long wavelength (>10m), their antennas take up a very large room. Furthermore, they must be located near the sea surface so that the surface waves are optimally generated and received. Both conditions imply a very high complexity when deploying such systems, especially near the coast. The concept of floating antenna array is to replace conventional coastal receive unit by a sea floating array, constituted of a set of receive buoys. In following pages, interests of such technology are presented.