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(IVAR) - Final Report - Strategic Environmental Research and ...

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etween an event <strong>and</strong> a response to that event. In other words, what constitutes real time<br />

depends upon how an event <strong>and</strong> the response to that event are defined.<br />

In the context of avian radars, if the event is simply defined as transmitting a burst of energy from<br />

the radar transceiver, <strong>and</strong> the response is defined as detecting the return of some of that energy<br />

from a target, then real time is measured in milliseconds. If the response is defined as detecting<br />

movement by a target such as a bird, then real time would on the order of several seconds – the<br />

time it takes to detect <strong>and</strong> compare the position of a target in two successive scans of the radar.<br />

This definition of real time may have a longer timeline if the event-response includes the time it<br />

takes to first acquire the target as it moves into the radar beam, which may require 3-4 scans to<br />

form successive plots into a confirmed track. And finally, real time could be on the order of tens<br />

of seconds in a “sense & alert” scenario, where the response is to generate an alert when a<br />

confirmed target is headed toward a predefined space, such as the approach corridor at an airfield<br />

or a waste water containment pond.<br />

Unless otherwise stated, “real time” is used in this <strong>and</strong> other <strong>IVAR</strong> documents to mean that the<br />

processor can continuously track the movements of all confirmed targets within the sampling<br />

volume of the radar beam, including computing <strong>and</strong> recording all parametric data for each of the<br />

targets, in the time it takes for a single scan of the radar – nominally 2.5 seconds for the avian<br />

radar systems used in the <strong>IVAR</strong> studies.<br />

2.4.2 BirdRad - Analog Radars with Manual Tracking<br />

BirdRad is an analog avian radar system that was developed by Dr. Gauthreaux at Clemson<br />

University with funding from the DOD Legacy Program Office (Gauthreaux, 1999). The Furuno<br />

2155BB radar sensor transceiver (RST) <strong>and</strong> parabolic dish antenna used for BirdRad were<br />

mounted on a wheeled cart <strong>and</strong> connected to a support trailer by a 50 ft umbilical cable, as<br />

illustrated in Figure 2-2. The cable provides power to <strong>and</strong> control of the RST <strong>and</strong> carries the<br />

received analog radar signals to the processing electronics inside the trailer. The output from a<br />

global positioning system (GPS) unit mounted on the roof of the BirdRad trailer is also fed into<br />

the processing electronics of the FR-2155BB. The output from the “black box” processing<br />

electronics of the FR-2155BB is connected to a st<strong>and</strong>ard analog plan position indicator (PPI)<br />

display. The position of the radar is at the center of the display, the degrees of azimuth are<br />

displayed around the perimeter, <strong>and</strong> the range rings are displayed outward from the center (see<br />

Figure 2-3) – in this case, at 450 m (0.25 nmi) increments. While the output signal from the<br />

2155BB can be displayed directly on a CRT or computer monitor, in the BirdRad configuration<br />

the output first passes through a video capture board in a desktop PC <strong>and</strong> then to the computer<br />

monitor. This allows the operator to view the PPI display on the computer monitor <strong>and</strong>, through<br />

the use of a companion software product, to save static images (screen captures) of the PPI<br />

display as graphic files on the computer’s hard disk.<br />

14

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