关于雷达技术调研报告

作者：李勇吉

Subtitle: the use of radar technology in civil aviation(how to locate the plane and garantee a safe travel) 

Introductions: Malaysia Airlines’ MH370 incident has happened for more than four years , but the truth of the incident has still not been unearthed, which makes the victim’s family still sad. In fact, I have been wondering why the aircraft weighing 1,500 tons will disappear in a vacuum, and how the civil aviation company monitors the passenger aircraft through radar.

A radar is an electronic device that uses electromagnetic waves to detect a target. The radar emits electromagnetic waves to illuminate the target and receive its echoes, thereby obtaining information such as the distance from the target to the electromagnetic wave emission point, the rate of change of the distance (radial velocity), the azimuth, and the height.
Typically, the aircraft's connection to the ground is achieved by the pilot using a very high frequency (VHF) radio to talk to ground control personnel. In addition to radio communications, controllers can also obtain information such as the location of the aircraft through ground control radars.
Regulatory radars can be divided into two types: primary surveillance radars and secondary surveillance radars. Primary surveillance radar acquires echoes by scanning to locate the aircraft and cause the aircraft to display a small spot on the screen.
But people can't tell what the plane is. This requires a secondary surveillance radar to get more detailed information. The secondary surveillance radar sends an inquiry signal to the aircraft in the air. When the automatic answering machine receives the signal, it will send back its own detailed information, such as flight altitude, speed, position, ascending and descending, and even the flight number. Model, machine number, departure point and destination. It also provides critical alert information when an aircraft fails, the communication system fails, or is hijacked.
Some secondary surveillance radars also provide data link capabilities for both air and ground. This information, combined with the aircraft position information obtained by the primary radar, forms a comprehensive message that is displayed on the ground terminal's visual terminal screen. Therefore, secondary radars are often used in conjunction with primary radars. But on the route away from the main airport, the radar in air control mainly relies on secondary radar.
From the radar equipment situation of the countries in the world, the airport surveillance radar equipped with the airport itself is very short, and is limited to the airport. During the flight of the aircraft, air control is mainly carried out through the military's early warning radars, especially secondary surveillance radars.
Under normal circumstances, civil aviation aircraft are difficult to avoid military radar surveillance. Especially in the territory of the Malaysian state where the advanced radar is densely deployed, it is almost impossible for the lost aircraft to avoid its effective air defense system.
However, once the aircraft has closed the answering machine, the ground control will be “caught”; if the ground staff is negligent, they may not notice the flight of the civil aircraft. In addition, on some routes across the ocean, there are also airspace that cannot be covered by radar signals, and the aircraft will be "invisible" on the radar. If the Malaysia Airlines lost passenger aircraft really flew to the Indian Ocean, then these three abnormal conditions may appear on the aircraft at the same time, and the horse's radar is naturally difficult to trace.
In this case, we need other equipment to detect the flight of the aircraft. As a phonograph and video recorder in the aviation system, black box is equivalent to an air crash "witness". But once it falls into the deep sea, all the truth is unknown. After the accident of Malaysia Airlines, many people asked: Why can't you let the black box realize cloud storage and cloud sharing? Is this difficult? In this era of Internet and broadband connections everywhere, representing the most advanced transportation civilization in the aviation field, but still staying in the "radio age", this is obviously unsatisfactory. In fact, local storage is still less expensive and reliable than wireless transmission. The current technology is not impossible to achieve the so-called "cloud storage", but if the data signal in the black box is transmitted synchronously in real time through the wireless terminal, it will most likely be intercepted and deciphered by various forces, which will involve serious The problem of aircraft information leaking. In order to apply a highly confidential and independent signal band, it is necessary to have a very good signal protection and shielding system. These combined costs often make airlines discouraged.

Conclusions: radars play a significant role in detecting the civil airplane, but in cases it can be useless. The black box technology should keep pace with the “information age ” and achieve cloud storage as soon as possible to avoid these kind of tragedy.