DRDO's LRDE working on Rajendra III radar

DRDO's LRDE working on Rajendra III radar

9 May, 2007

Electronics & Radar Development Establishment (LRDE) a unit of Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has embarked on developing advanced version of indigenous Rajendra II radar and is called Rajendra III. Rajendra III is indigenous slewable phased array radar.

The BLR-III vehicle on T-72 chasis is ready for track test. Phased array antenna has been fabricatedin Bharat Rlectronics Limited (BEL), Ghaziabad.

Collimated beam pattern and s/s cure for all 16 spot frequencies has been taken.

Rajendra II Radar

Rajendra II Radar is also slewable passive phased array radar. By 2005, Rajendra II had participated in more than 15 flight trials at Balasore missile testing range. The flight trials have been spread over 4 missions in both group and autonomous mode.

High altitude engagement, far boundary engagement, crossing and receding target engagement and multiple missions against multiple targets capabilities have been established.

Consistency in performance of radar in guiding missiles as close as 15m is established. During a mission, a Pilot less Target Aircraft (PTA) was neutralized while engaging crossing and receding target.

Rajendra radar is used for 3-D target detection, multi target tracking and multiple missile guidance under extreme hostile EW environment.

A main phased array consisting of 4000 phase control modules (PCMs), and a command phased array consisting of 1000 PCMs have been built to achieve the multi-functionality. A powerful high-end computer computes phases for all the elements of the array.

Rajendra controls the beam positioning sequence through beam requests for each track at adaptive data rates and performs multifunctional roles like search –confirm –track -interrogate targets, assign and lock on launchers, and launch/acquire/ track/guide missiles.

The RDP supplies track data to remote group control centre. Rajendra features a Dual channel radar receiver and a C band transmitter, although the complete transmiting and receiving features and bands are unknown.

Rajendra Multisensor Tracking features 2-D battery surveillance radar (BSR) with 360 degree coverage and a larger detection range provides track data to the multifunction, slewable, 3-D phased array radar.

The multisensor direction finder in Rajendra processes the track data from the phased array radar and the BSR to identify the targets reported by both the sensors and maintains a common track database.

For those BSR tracks, which are not being reported by Rajendra though under its coverage, target acquisition is initiated with elevation search in the designated direction. The antenna is skewed in the direction of threat to acquire the targets, which are outside the covered air space.

The major functions of the radar are:
•Surveillance of the assigned volume of space
•Acquisition of aircraft targets either independently or handed over from group control centre and battery surveillance radar
•Tracking of targets
•Tracking of assigned targets and missiles during engagement
•Command guidance of missiles
•Integrated IFF functions

The AKASH Surface to Air Missile (SAM) system is guided by Rajendra radar. Rajendra radar features a “phase shifter” technology.

Phase shifter when integrated in large numbers for electronic beam steering, allows Rajendra radar to simultaneously track multiple aircraft and also guide multiple missiles towards these targets.

The phase shifter was designed and developed by Prof Bharati Bhat, a scientist from Centre for Applied Research in Electronics (CARE) of IIT, Delhi, and her team.