Modeling the effects of wind turbines on radar returns

Wind turbines located near radar installations can significantly interfere with a radar´s ability to detect its intended targets. In order to better understand and mitigate the adverse effects of wind turbines on radar, the government and wind farm community need tools that can be used to analyze the radar returns from wind turbines. Remcom´s XGtd^® software is a high frequency solver capable of calculating the radar cross section of electrically large objects. In this paper, interference from wind turbines is predicted using XGtd simulations and new post-processing algorithms that calculate Doppler shift quantities based on points of interaction with the rotating turbine blades. Results of the analysis are used to calculate the bistatic radar cross section and Doppler shift from two blade orientations. In addition, the time-varying monostatic radar cross section and Doppler shift for a single wind turbine are analyzed and shown to agree well with measured data from actual wind turbines.