Chinese Radar Developments - KLJ series and others

tphuang

tphuang

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Patchwork_Chimera said:
We must not allow a Heavenly Gap!!! Those godless commies are gonna ice Jesus!

This nation shall redouble its efforts to locate, positively identify, and successfully extract the Mandate of Heaven before J.C. ends up even holier!

On a more serious note, this is a great example of ESAs' growing ubiquity among Chinese RF sensor systems, even in the civilian sector. The colossal scale of the CN electronics manufacturing sector - combined with extensive domestic, vertically integrated supply chains for RF devices - has enabled the production of civilian ESA systems at high enough volumes (and low enough costs) for a diverse and innovative production ecosystem to emerge. In addition, due to the Chinese GaN industry's massive growth recently, its usage in both military and civilian AESAs has grown increasingly common.

Over the past couple years, these factors have all coalesced into a world-class domestic RF sensor system market. An expansive catalogue of both GaA and GaN based ESA systems - all of which thoroughly outclass their MSA functional equivalents - are offered at competitive, or sometimes outright superior prices than analogous MSAs (for lotsa reasons, but it's out-of-scope for this reply). With that in mind, plus the fact that - by nature - AESA systems are more robust, less prone to failure, less expensive to run, and typically simpler to set up and operate, it's no mystery why ESAs (especially GaN-based systems as they continue to proliferate) make up a rapidly growing share of the civilian systems in use.
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hi Patch,

what do you think about Gallium Oxide based AESA sensor for the future? Is that the direction we are going to move to?
 
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bebops

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i dont think stealth is important.

hypersonic missile with GaN AESA detect can shoot down 5th and 6th gen planes easily

GaN AESA is the "go-to" radar nowadays.

future-quantum electromagnetic spectrum radar?
 
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siegecrossbow

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Stealthflanker

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for GaN tho.. with great power comes great heat load. What one can do is to make smaller TRM's with GaN thus make better use of the available aperture.

For AESA, detection range scales far strongly with number of TRM's compared to power as it's a function of cube of TRM (dont forget to add the 4th root rules tho) 68 % of range increase can be obtained by packing twice the amount of TRM (e.g 2000 vs 1000) If one only relies on GaN "4-5 times the power" it would need 8 times the power to achieve the same 68% gain as one with twice the amount of TRM's.

The "ideal outlook" However if one is not limited by cooling constraint and financial is to increase Both TRM counts and Power at the same time. 100% gain in detection range could be achieved by increasing both TRM counts and power emitted by factor of 2.
 
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Tam

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bebops said:
i dont think stealth is important.

hypersonic missile with GaN AESA detect can shoot down 5th and 6th gen planes easily

GaN AESA is the "go-to" radar nowadays.

future-quantum electromagnetic spectrum radar?
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GaN is just for the amplifiers on the seeker, with GaN offering a wider band gap and cooler operation. It does not make a radar automatically more powerful. With the same amount of power, a GaN radar is essentially a cooler, more compact version of what you did with a GaAs radar. It comes down to power supply. You need to put enough juice to exploit it so for the same amount of temperature, you are emitting more power. But again there's still a limit to how far you can push the heat because a missile seeker barely has enough space for cooling. The main reason you may be using GaN on a missile instead is to make your battery last longer, with your seeker still transmitting the same amount of transmission power for less heat or wasted energy, which means the seeker and guidance system can operate longer and offer more range, if the propellant allows for it.

Ultimately what comes down for the missile is the battery for it. Lighter, more compact, more powerful batteries allow for more powerful seekers, more denser electronics, plus the ability to use them longer, which in turn, gives you more range. This is where the national level of your battery technology counts, and you can have a good idea of it on a very different thread [see the NEV thread].

Beyond Gallium Nitride, there's Gallium Oxide and there's even something beyond that, and that's Aluminum Nitride.
 
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tphuang

tphuang

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Tam said:
GaN is just for the amplifiers on the seeker, with GaN offering a wider band gap and cooler operation. It does not make a radar automatically more powerful. With the same amount of power, a GaN radar is essentially a cooler, more compact version of what you did with a GaAs radar. It comes down to power supply. You need to put enough juice to exploit it so for the same amount of temperature, you are emitting more power. But again there's still a limit to how far you can push the heat because a missile seeker barely has enough space for cooling. The main reason you may be using GaN on a missile instead is to make your battery last longer, with your seeker still transmitting the same amount of transmission power for less heat or wasted energy, which means the seeker and guidance system can operate longer and offer more range, if the propellant allows for it.

Ultimately what comes down for the missile is the battery for it. Lighter, more compact, more powerful batteries allow for more powerful seekers, more denser electronics, plus the ability to use them longer, which in turn, gives you more range. This is where the national level of your battery technology counts, and you can have a good idea of it on a very different thread [see the NEV thread].

Beyond Gallium Nitride, there's Gallium Oxide and there's even something beyond that, and that's Aluminum Nitride.
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yeah, Aluminum Nitride. That's going to be so fanciful, expensive technology. But it will be interesting to see them putting GaN seekers on their missiles.

Looks like Ga2O3 is next, since they are already able to produce 8-inch wafers for it. GaN is so common now around China.
 
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