Estimates of radar field strengths in a vehicular environment
Publish date: 2019-06-03
Report number: FOI-R--4772--SE
Pages: 37
Written in: English
Keywords:
- Radar
- EMC
- Wave propagation
Abstract
A vehicle can be exposed to high field strengths from high power transmitters in certain environments. The aim of the report is to investigate which field strengths a vehicle can be exposed to on public roads and parking spaces from radar systems that use frequencies above 1GHz. The survey covers various types of radar systems such as military radar systems, weather radar and navigation radar. For different types of radar systems, field strength is calculated. The highest field strength is in the main lobe of the antenna and based on this, some worst-case analyzes are made showing high field strengths for a distance of several hundreds of meters, or even kilometers. Fortunately, it is unusual to be in the antenna's main lobe at short distances, although it may occur and then constitute a challenging situation for the electronics in a vehicle. One example is maritime radionavigation radars in harbors or near bridges with vehicles. For weather radar, a more detailed analysis is carried out, which also takes into account terrain and vegetation. For the worst case, the power density reaches a little bit over 30 dBW/m2 (about 600 V/m), which is reduced to about 15-20 dBW/m2 in a forest. Usually, the weather stations are properly planned to avoid too large power densities at ground level in the surroundings. Without vegetation/forest, the power density does not reach 20 dBW/m2 and a corresponding field strength of about 200 V/m for the majority of situations. To put the results obtained into perspective, some examples are given of limits for electromagnetic fields, for both electronics and humans.