8.1 Introduction

The detailed requirements for the radar components needed to support target recognition functions are dependent upon several factors. The key ones are the type of high-resolution mode being employed, the range and the type of target, the level and the reliability of the target recognition capability required and the clutter environment. Although requirements for individual applications vary considerably from recognising ships with ISAR at short range, to discriminating the warhead at a range of several hundred or even thousands of kilometres in ballistic missile defence, general guidelines can be provided.

The implications on the design of the waveform generator and reference frequencies, the up-converters, the transmitter, the receiver, the digitiser and the signal processor are discussed for the various high-resolution techniques. As a design reference, the high-resolution mode requirements for the radar components and system are compared with the requirements for lower resolution modes for the detection and tracking of the target with the same radar. As many radars that are used for conventional radar modes can be potentially upgraded to provide target recognition modes, this is considered to be a reasonable basis for comparison.

8.2 Waveform generation