Radar simulation, in Java
YouTube
if you lack Java.
The waves are realistic, while the radar system itself is squeezed to
fit inside the simulation. You may click on it to generate new pulses
everywhere. What happens in the simulation is in order:
- 1. A radar pulse is generated in the horn, which is the blue
diagonal line at the bottom, in the middle.
The point of horns is to steer the waves in a fanlike pattern. That
some waves spill over its edge is a real effect.
- 2. The pulse hits the grating interference pattern on the left
wall, were it is reflected with slightly different frequencies or
patterns in different directions.
The point of this is to differentiate the reflections by frequency,
so the radar does not have to sweep.
- 3. A part of the wave front hits the wingtip of a plane flying
near the right wall of the simulation.
The wingtip reflects the wave in many directions.
- 4. A part of the reflection hits the interference grating, and
is reflected back into the horn for detection.
As you can see, not much get back.
- 5. Reflections from the right wall also come back to the
detector in the horn.
As you can see, rather a lot gets reflected back from the wall.
That is the reason one do not point radars at walls.
There is also a mayhem of other reflections after this because the
plane and the radar are so close in the simulation. In reality they
are far away, but a simulation like that would not be as fun.
You may remove waves by clicking several times in the bottom of the
blue line of the horn.
2012-5-5