INTRODUCTION TO THE MONOPULSE CONCEPT

13

The antenna, shown mounted on its rotating pedestal in Fig. 1.7,

consisted of four 16-in. parabolic reflectors cut down and welded

together, each with a separate feed at its focal point. One

reflector was used to transmit and the other three to receive, two

in azimuth and two in elevation with one reflector common to

both planes. In this way the duplexing problem was avoided.

Each pair of receiving antennas constituted an interferometer

with phase centers spaced about 15 in. apart, corresponding to an

electrical spacing of about 12X at the operating wavelength of

3.2 cm. From Eq. (1.1) the beamwidth between first nulls of

the interference pattern was about 4.8, corresponding to a range

of phase of 180 to +180. The half-power beamwidth of the

Fig. 1.6 An early dual-plane phase-comparison monopulse radar tracking

system. (After Blewett, Hansen, Troell, and Kirkpatrick.)

paraboloids was somewhat greater, about 6, resulting in about

0.6 of reverse polarity signal from the adjacent interference

lobes at the edges of the beam. Reverse polarity signals would

be expected to cause a tracking radar to veer away from the

target, and although no trouble was experienced it was recognized

that an optimum interferometer design should have individual

pattern beamwidths less than the composite interference beam-

width. If this system were to be used for angle scanning within

the beam instead of boresight tracking, the pattern beamwidths

should be limited to half of the interference beamwidth, because

the output of the phase comparator used for angle detection is a

multiple-valued function of angle of arrival for any range of phase

exceeding -90 to +90.

Generated on 2014-06-05 00:09 GMT / http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015010937897

Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.hathitrust.org/access_use#pd-google

By heterodyning the r-f signals against a common local