A Fast Echo Evaluation Method of Chaff Cloud

Yu Le Liu Songhua Zuo Yanchun Liu Wei Guo Lixin

School of P. O. E. School of P. O. E School of P. O. E School of P. O. E School of P. O. E
Xidian University Xidian University Xidian University Xidian University Xidian University
Xi’an, China Xi’an, China Xi’an, China Xi’an, China Xi’an, China
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—Echo estimation of chaff cloud before they are put Therefore, the actual echo signal of the chaff cloud is very
into use is a crucial issue in anti-electromagnetic interference. It complicated. The proposed signal model in this paper relies on
is quite difficult to calculate the echo of the chaff cloud that the following assumption:
contains millions of chaff elements. Comparing with the general
numerical method in time-domain, a more efficient method to 1) The interval length between any two chaff elements in
calculate the echo of the chaff cloud is proposed in this paper. A cloud is larger than two wavelengths.
superposition strategy is introduced to calculate the echo by 2) The amplitude and the phase of the scattered signal are not
summarizing the echo of a single chaff element that is pre-stored correlated with each other.
in the database. This strategy is available when the interval 3) The effect of noise on the echo signal is neglected.
length between any two elements in cloud is larger than two 4) Doppler frequency shift is not considered.
wavelengths. Then, we give the echo of the chaff cloud illustrated
by two modulated incident signals.
Based on the assumptions above, the echo is a vector
summation of the echo provided by each elements, the
Keywords—chaff; time-domain; fast method; superposition; synthesis echo can be expressed as follow [4]
echo signal.   j N 
S  Ae   Ak e jk (1)
I. INTRODUCTION  k 1

where A is the amplitude and  is the phase of the echo, Ak
Chaff is a very effective jammer used in electromagnetic and k are the echo amplitude and phase of the k -th chaff
countermeasures. The chaff cloud usually consists of a large element, N is the number of chaff element. Therefore, the fast
number of conducting wires cut to half-wavelength to resonate method to calculate echo signal can be divided into the
at radar frequencies. It can be used against anti-ship or anti- following steps:
aircraft missiles. Many researchers do their effort to study how 1) A database is established to store the echoes of horizontal
to discriminate a real target, e.g., an aircraft, and a chaff cloud. and vertical components of a single chaff element.
They can effectively distinguish the target and chaff cloud by 2) Calculate the time delay, incident angle, and scattering
using frequency domain method. For aerial case, a chaff cloud angle of each chaff element.
moves usually at speeds that are different to the speed of the 3) Match the corresponding echo signal of each chaff in the
airplane. Therefore, it is convenient to distinguish the target in database according to the incident and scattering angles.
time domain. Before this, one needs obtaining the echo of chaff 4) Sum all the echo according to 1).
cloud using an efficient method. The purpose of this paper is
providing a faster echo estimation method. III. COORDINATE SYSTEM
In recent years, the radar echo of chaff clouds has been In this section, the method how to calculate the incident and
studied from many angles: Literature [1] considered the scattering angles of each chaff element is discussed in detail.
influence of chaff motion on the frequency spectrum. Different First, a global coordinate system is established shown in Fig.1.
polarizations have been discussed in the literature [2] and [3]. Suppose the coordinate system is established at the geometric
The above is all about frequency domain analysis of chaff. center of the chaff cloud. The position of the k -th chaff is
There are very few literatures about echo evaluation. Literature  xk , yk , zk  and its orientation is  k , k  . The orientation of
[4] calculates the echo of chaff cloud using LFM signal, but its incident wave and scattering wave are  t , t  and  r ,  r  .
echo is based on simple formulas rather than electromagnetic Assuming that the incident wave is a linearly polarized wave
calculations. The fast echo evaluation method in this paper is with any polarization angle, we can divide it into horizontal
based on superposition and echo evaluation of a single chaff is polarization eh1 and vertical polarization ev1 components.
based on FDTD. Similarly, the scattering wave also can be divided into the
horizontal polarization eh 2 and the vertical polarization ev 2
II. METHOD DESCRIPTION components, which are shown in Fig.1.
The echo of a chaff cloud is affected by many factors, such When electromagnetic wave illustrates the chaff element, we
as atmospheric environment, moving speed, and various noises. assign the direction of the incident wave as z-axis, and assign

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 the directions of horizontal eh1 and vertical ev1 polarization
along x-axis and y-axis, which are shown in Fig.2(a). For the
scattering, we take the opposite direction of the scattered wave
along z-axis shown as Fig.2(b). We define the angle between
the direction of the incident wave and the orientation of the
chaff as t , and the angle between the opposite direction of
the scattering wave and the orientation as r . 1 is the angle
between the projections of chaff onto the eh1  ev1 and eh1 .  2
is the angle between the projections of chaff onto the
eh 2  ev 2 plane and eh 2 .
z

d k ,k  Fig. 3. Echo signal of Gaussian.

 y
T t ,t  o Eh 2

Rr ,r 
Eh1 x
Ev 2
Ev1

Fig. 1. Global coordinate system.

nt  nr

 
t d k ,k  r d k ,k 
o ev1 o ev 2
1 2

eh1 eh 2 Fig. 4. Echo signal of chirp.

(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Local coordinate system. V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a fast echo evaluation method based on
According to the references [5], we can obtain the superposition is used to calculate the echo of the chaff cloud.
relationship between the incident and the scattered field of the This method has proven to be reliable in frequency domain
half-wavelength dipole calculation when interval length between two chaff is larger
 than two wavelengths. This method has great practical
cos( cos  r )
 Eh 2   Le jkr 2 significance in the case of low accuracy.
E    sin  r
 v2  2 rz 0 sin r (2)
VI. ACKNOWLEGE
 cos 1cos 2 sin 1 cos  2   Eh1 
cos  sin  sin  sin    E  Project supported by the National Natural Science
 1 2 1 2   v1 
Foundation of China (Grant No.61871457), the Foundation for
where z0  73.1  , L   /  , wave impedance  =120 , Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science
and r is the distance of total path of transmission to reception. Foundation of China (Grant No.61621005).
According to the local coordinate system of a single chaff, we
can get the expression about 1 and  2 . REFERENCES
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