METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR OPERATING A SURFACE DETECTION SURVEILLANCE RADAR USING FREQUENCY AGILE PULSE TRANSMISSIONS

In accordance with the principles of the invention, a surveillance radar is provided with a rotating, frequency squinting, end-fed slotted array antenna, which is caused to transmit a plurality of different carrier frequency pulses for successively illuminating specific antenna beam positions during rotation of the antenna. Upon reception of each radar signal return, a signal processor responsive to the frequency of each transmitted pulse and the mechanical pointing angle of the antenna at the time of transmission of each pulse, will determine the frequency dependent squint angle for the transmitted pulse and combine that angle with the instantaneous mechanical pointing angle of the antenna at the time of the pulse transmission, to determine the actual beam pointing angle for each pulse at the time of its transmission. A video signal processor groups together the pulse signal returns from physically adjacent ones of the actual beam pointing angles for common processing, i.e, integration, for improving the target detection performance of the radar system.