Publications

Wind turbines have grown in size and capacity with today's average turbine having a power capacity of around 1.9 MW, reaching to heights of over 495 feet from ground to blade tip, and operating with speeds at the tip of the blade up to 200 knots. When these machines are installed within the line-of-sight of a radar system, they can cause significant clutter and interference, detrimentally impacting the primary surveillance radar (PSR) performance. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) were co-funded to conduct field tests and evaluations over two years in order to: I. Characterize the impact of wind turbines on existing Program-of-Record (POR) air surveillance radars; II. Assess near-term technologies proposed by industry that have the potential to mitigate the interference from wind turbines on radar systems; and III. Collect data and increase technical understanding of interference issues to advance development of long-term mitigation strategies. MIT LL and SNL managed the tests and evaluated resulting data from three flight campaigns to test eight mitigation technologies on terminal (short) and long-range (60 nmi and 250 nmi) radar systems. Combined across the three flight campaigns, more than 460 of hours of flight time were logged. This paper summarizes the Interagency Field Test & Evaluation (IFT&E) program and publicly- available results from the tests. It will also discuss the current wind turbine-radar interference evaluation process within the government and a proposed process to deploy mitigation technologies.

Abstract not provided.

The complexity of net-centric system of systems (SoS) being fielded today has the military leadership increasingly dependent on modeling and simulation (M&S) tools for evaluating performance. Several types of M&S tools are required to model different aspects of military systems, yet these tools often have different computational fidelities in terms of time and scale. Current approaches using direct information transfer between M&S tools, such as High Level Architecture (HLA) and MATREX, do not provide the mechanisms for disparate tools to make direct use of each other's information [1], [2]. Thus, many military SoS analyses assume perfect communications, an unrealistic assumption that leaves a gap for conducting more comprehensive analyses for large-scale, net-centric SoS problems. This research addresses this gap by developing general purpose methodologies to bridge the gap between diverse M&S tools resulting in a capability that enables military decision makers to evaluate comms system performance effects at a SoS level [3]. This paper discusses the methodology, including parameter selection, data generation, surrogate modeling and SoS simulation results. © 2012 IEEE.

Abstract not provided.