Radar and Radio Navigation in Aviation

The lecture covers the functioning of current systems used in air traffic control and for general airspace surveillance worldwide.  It begins with an overview of the structure of international air traffic control, including the organisations involved up to the state level (ICAO, Eurocontrol, DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung).
Radar technology introduces the general fundamentals before specifically addressing signal generation and processing in primary pulse Doppler radars used in air traffic control, airspace surveillance and weather observation, right through to the display of target coordinates. The pulse compression method for increasing the signal-to-noise ratio in the transmission channel is a key focus here. Secondary radar, the backbone of air traffic control, is widely used in its more modern Mode S operating mode as the technical standard. The lecture explains how ground equipment and on-board devices (transponders) work and highlights additional applications in aircraft location through multilateration, position reporting through ADS-B and collision avoidance (ACAS/TCAS). 

The exercise covers measurement technology, representation and interpretation of real radio fields from primary and secondary radar as well as radio navigation (ILS, DME). This includes, among other things, the formation of spatial modulation by superimposing antenna patterns and performing pulse compression in the radar reception channel using practical examples.