ASR-11 radar performance assessment over a wind turbine farm

Wind turbines are known to interfere with radar systems, including Air Traffic Control (ATC) radar. Despite this being a known issue, relatively few quantitative studies have been performed which analyze the performance of ATC radar systems impacted by wind farms. For this study, an Apache helicopter flew two sets of varied flight paths above two wind farm in proximity to a Raytheon ASR-11 ATC radar. The first of these tests occurred in July under moderate wind conditions. The second occurred in January during faster winds and light snow. Results were analyzed to assess the impact of the wind farm on probability of detection (PD) and false track. In July, PD for the test aircraft was 87%, only 6% below that of aircraft flying outside of the wind farm. In January, PD for the Apache was down to 70%, over 25% less than other air traffic. The wind farm generated 18-25 false tracks per scan. Mitigation was able to reduce this to less than 2 per scan.