TABLE OF CONTENTS The earliest form of radar
Basic system configurations
Ways of locating targets
Applications
Multistatic radars have some special uses, particularly as a counter to jamming and anti-radar munitions.
In a monostatic radar system the transmitter and receiver are located at the same place, sometimes sharing a single antenna. If the transmitter and receiver are widely separated, by a baseline typically one-third of the distance to the target, then the system is said to be bistatic. If there are several widely distributed receivers associated with a single transmitter, or (more rarely) several transmitters, then the system is multistatic. Bistatic radar is thus a subset of multistatic radar, but is by far the most common form used.
The earliest radars had to be bistatic since it was not practicable to build pulse waveform radars and T R switching. An early example of a bistatic radar was built by Dr Albert Taylor and his assistant, Leo Young, at the US Naval Research Laboratory in 1922. Using a 500 Hz CW modulated transmitter, and a receiver placed in a car, Taylor and Young drove across the Potomac River and detected a variety of targets, including a wooden ship (for more details see Swords [1]).
It is not always necessary to have your own cooperative transmitter in a bistatic radar. During World War II the Germans made use of the British Chain Home radar as a transmitter of opportunity for their Kleine-Heidelberg receiving system, and were able to...
