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Radar System Engineering

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SEC. 12.7] A UTOMA TIC FREQUENCY CONTROL 455<br />

in the system; these will be discussed in the next section. In the simplest<br />

type of radar AFC, the integrated discriminator pulse output, suitably<br />

amplified, would go directly to the reflector of the local oscillator. This<br />

“hold in” type of AFC requires manual tuning each time the radar is<br />

turned on. The sawtooth generator shown in the block diagram converts<br />

the circuit to the more desirable “search and lock” type. The<br />

sawtooth “sweeps” the local-oscillator frequent y until the change in<br />

polarity of the discriminator output when “crossover” is reached results<br />

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FIG.1212.-Block diagram of typical AFC; beacon AFC portion is shown as dotted line<br />

in signals of proper polarity to operate a circuit which stops the sawtooth.<br />

This circuit will find the correct frequency if crossover is anywhere<br />

within the electronic tuning range of the local oscillator. Half a second<br />

is a typical period of one sawtooth search cycle.<br />

The r-f part of the block diagram shows a double mixer that has<br />

separate crystals for the radar and AFC functions, both receiving power<br />

from the radar local oscillator. This permits the AFC crystal to be<br />

operated at a predetermined power level. The alternative-taking the<br />

AFC information from the output signal of the radar crystal arising<br />

from transmitter power that leaks through the TR switch-has been<br />

used but suffers from serious disadvantages. The leakage power may<br />

be 10 to 20 times that desired for most favorable operation of the crystal,<br />

and is variable from one TR tube to another. An even more serious<br />

difficulty is caused by the “ spike” energy, which, because it occurs as an<br />

extremely short pulse, contains a very wide range of frequency components.<br />

Spurious frequencies present in the spike mask the desired<br />

inf ormat ion. A successful corrective has been to suppress the i-f amplifier

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