Most complete modeling of secondary survelliance radar in Simulink

Example Radar System Modeling shows how to set up a radar system simulation consisting of a transmitter, a channel with a target, and a receiver (and is essentially a primary radar). I want to develop my own version of a secondary survelliance radar system based on this model.

The primary radar is based on three components: a transmitter, an antenna, and a receiver (taken from Wikipedia).

The secondary radar is somewhat more complex. In addition to the transmitter, antenna, and receiver, it includes an azimuth mark generator, a signal processor, and an aircraft transponder with an antenna (taken from Wikipedia).

In addition, the basic model has a number of shortcomings that would be nice to eliminate in the approach to the most complete modeling of a secondary radar, namely:

1. Modeling the propagation of a generated radio wave in a medium (taking into account reflection from objects).

2. Setting an arbitrary law of target motion and their (targets) number.

Of course, these blocks are not provided in the simplified model, but maybe you can recommend models that are worth paying attention to for inspiration?

Answer 1

[Karanjot]

Hi Andrew,

To develop a secondary surveillance radar (SSR) system in MATLAB, I recommend the following to get started:

• Use MATLAB's Phased Array System Toolbox for transmitter, antenna, and receiver modeling.
• Implement azimuth mark generation and signal processing using MATLAB's DSP System.
• Simulate the transponder using MATLAB's communication system functions & use MATLAB's RF Propagation functions, like raytrace, to simulate wave propagation and reflections.
• Define target motion and multiple targets using Simulink or Stateflow, and phased.Platform.

Additionally, explore MATLAB's Radar Toolbox for advanced modeling.

[Andrew Sol]

Thank you for your answer, but I would like to clarify something, in case you know:

On the first point: are the transmitter, antenna and receiver models suitable only for phased arrays, or for mechanical antennas too?

On the second point: it is not entirely clear what the generated azimuth mark looks like. Is it a number? In what form, decimal, binary?

On the third point: can the ray tracing algorithm work if the object is moving?

On the fourth point: phased.Platform - what does this refer to, where should I look?