In the past decade, many new environmental constraints and demands have emerged complicating the market place for radars used in civil and military aviation applications.

Air Traffic Control services have to adapt to the development of wind farms

A major issue in meeting energy targets for the coming years is finding appropriate sites for renewable technologies. Identifying sites for wind farms is particular complex with limited choices which meet the technical and economic criteria.

Depending on their location, wind turbines may interfere with some types of civilian and military radar, causing “clutter” on the radar display. The impact of wind farms on radar performance often becomes a barrier for wind farm developers. In 2011, EWEA carried out a survey and discovered that 19 GW of wind projects were blocked by radar difficulties in the UK, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, France, Spain, Greece and Ireland. According to Renewable UK, for example, half of all wind farm developments in the UK will face objections from aviation stakeholders on the grounds of radar interference, obstruction or impact to low flying. As for Germany, Defence ministries may approve the installation of large wind turbines near military airports if the wind power plants are equipped with control software that can stop the rotors if they threaten the performance of radar systems during critical operational periods. This is not an optimized solution, nor is the current concept of adding expensive gap-filler radars.

Air Traffic Control services could be vulnerable to the growing impact of 4G networks.

Many civil air traffic control radars and some military surveillance radars operate in the S-Band frequency range. The excellent meteorological and propagation characteristics make the use of this frequency band beneficial for radar operation. Unfortunately, these frequencies are also of special interest to 4G wireless communications systems such as LTE and WiMAX™ which also benefit from these optimal RF characteristics. Over the last few years, telecommunication companies have been developing and deploying 4G all over the world, including locations close to airports and close to radars. This close proximity, as well as the ever-increasing popularity of 4G cellular phones and devices, may cause radars to suffer from saturation and/or intermodulation generation. The accuracy, and therefore the security of Air Traffic Control services, could suffer.

Air Traffic Control services have to deal with new types of targets.

Over the past decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become an integral part of military and government operations. Increasingly, UAVs are gaining a foothold in commercial markets. UAVs can operate in civil or military airspace, which may lead to potential security and privacy problems.

Most radars do not perform well detecting  small unmanned aircraft. New technological advances and innovative features should allow radars to detect, track and identify small radar cross section (RCS<1m2) targets, such as drones and UAVs, in high clutter environments.

The increase of UAVs, as well as helicopters operations, combined with smaller planes and bigger aircraft in the same airspace complicates the detection of all targets and directly impacts ATC services. In addition, conflicts can arise with military airspace management.

Wind turbines, 4G mobile communications, UAVs, radar and airspace management needs to co-exist. The next generation of non-cooperative radar will have to be designed with innovative features such as a complete mitigation of wind farm effects, resistance against interference by 4G/LTE mobile phone signals and conformity of military ATC requirements (in term of Slow/Fast/Small targets detection and ECCM for example).

To answer to these new challenges Thales launches STAR NG

STAR NG, the new Primary Surveillance radar for Air Traffic Control

-       Answers to the Complex ATM environments : wind farms, 4G communication and UAVs deployment

-       Adequacy with dual use ATC requirements : Altimetry, slow/ fast/ small targets detection, information systems security and frequency agility / ECCM

-       Best operational value : excellent detection and optimized life cycle costs

-       Easy maintenance : Industrial remote access and optimized design

-       Stand-alone or co-mounted with Thales or third party secondary radar.System parameters - Range detection : 0,2 NM to 60 / 80 / 100 NM

Already a commercial success !

Thales has already finalized a significant agreement s for STAR NG.

The first significant reference : Marshall project for UK MoD