Fully solid state radar for vessel traffic services

A Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) is a maritime traffic monitoring system established by competent authorities. VTS systems use radars to keep track of vessel movements and to assure a safe navigation in the relevant area. For achieving their tasks, these radars must provide high spatial resolution assuring an accurate estimation of the vessel position and the discrimination of close vessels. The traditional VTS radars use magnetron for the final amplification and they are non coherent: high resolution is achieved by short-time high-peak power pulses. The last generation of VTS radars are instead pulse-Doppler and uses fully solid state technology. These new radars can meet the same high resolution with wideband long coded pulses and digital pulse compression; this solution brings to more compact, safe, reliable and flexible radars. In this paper a VTS radar based on a fully solid state architecture –LYRA 50– is presented. This radar is operative and live data can confirm the effectiveness of this solution.