Model of planetary radar for tracking near-Earth asteroids

Abstract

During the last years, hazards of asteroids and other smaller bodies belt located between Mars and Jupiter orbits have dramatically increased. That is an average range from Sun between 2.2 and 3.2 AU, astronomical unit. By definition, a solar system body is a near Earth object if its closest approach to the Sun is less than 1.3 AU. Planetary radars have been developed since the sixties of the previous century. The purpose of them is to protect the Earth from the hazards of the celestial objects that affect the life of mankind and the performance of artificial satellites, as well as other space technology fields. Planetary radars applied full transmit and receive model that is used for the track of position and velocity of the moving asteroids. In this paper, authors make use of simulation for a moving asteroid that fully reflects all of the incident signals off its radar cross-sectional surface. The RF signal is collected by the antenna is processed by a superheterodyne receiver, which is modeled using MATLAB and Simulink. The received signal is processed and analyzed so as to examine the simulated asteroid behavior.