Design and manufacture of atmospheric radar systems

ATRAD has secured a major contract from Wuhan University in China to design, manufacture and install a Mesospheric Stratospheric Tropospheric (MST) radar in Wuhan, China.

The design will be unique and will employ a distributed transmitter system rather than the conventional single rack transmitter.

The use of a distributed transmitter architecture allows for a more efficient radar operation and supports flexible radar beam steering. Furthermore, the distributed architecture allows for a completely solid state design and significantly reduces the cabling costs associated with a large antenna array.

This contract is for the largest radar system undertaken by ATRAD and with a 512 circular antenna array with a total output of 512kW, it will also be the largest atmospheric research radar in China.

The project will span 14 months with the final system being delivered in late 2002.