Biography
Biography: Akash Pandey
Abstract
Over the years RADARs have been in use for various purposes like target detection, navigation, geological observations, etc. and now also in automobile industry as automotive radar for connected car solutions. It works on the basic principle of reflection. A wind profiling RADAR is a complicated system of transmitters and receivers and a large array of antennas to determine the wind profiles like wind vectors, directions, wind velocity, precipitation etc. The Exciter plays a major role as it forms a part of transmitter section. The exciter is used to feed the antenna elements with signal to be transmitted into the atmosphere and the reflections received are fed to an RF Front End receiver and then to processing system to determine wind profiles mentioned above. The exciter generates the radar operating frequency of varying power levels as desired by the user which depends on the operational height to be achieved. But at the same time the power levels generated by the exciter are constrained by the input levels of the further sections in the system. The objective behind setting up a wind profiling radar is to reduce the tedious task of the scientist of periodically launching a balloon to determine the wind profiles. On one hand it costs a huge amount of money and also increases the cost if the communication link is lost with launched balloon and there is a need to launch another balloon and on the other hand it is every time required to take the permission of the Air Traffic Control and higher authorities before the launch. The radar data helps the Air Traffic Control in providing weather information to the operating flights. The thesis gives an introduction of what is a radar, what are the various kinds of radars and how a radar functions. It also discusses the basic operating principle of radar and how is wind profiling radar different from other radars and conventional weather radars. Next it explains in detail the blocks of the exciter, communication protocol and the modes of operation. The simulation results of the exciter in different operational modes have been shown and the stage wise test results of the system has also been attached.