Radar Definition

Radar is a term that comes from an English acronym: Radio detecting and ranging(“Detection and location by radio”). It’s about a system that, through electromagnetic radiation, allows to detect the location or speed of an object. The notion of radar is also used to name the device that applies this system.

For example: “The army radar detected a suspicious plane that was flying without authorization over the Bautista River”, “According to the police radar, the car was traveling at 180 kilometers per hour”, “The airport has eight radars to control air traffic”.

What the radar does is emit waves electromagnetic that are reflected by the target and received at the same position of the emitter. that kind of echo It allows processing various information, such as distances, speeds, altitudes and directions of moving or static objects.

Radars can be classified using a wide variety of criteria for it. Thus, for example, among the most significant proposals are the following:

• If the shape of the wave is taken into account, they can be divided into three groups: continuous wave with modulation, continuous wave and pulsed wave.

• If the number of antennas is taken into account, they can be classified into three types: multistatic, monostatic and bistatic.

Radars have multiple uses. They can be used by armed forces to know the position and movements of various targets; by policeman to measure the speed at which cars travel along a highway; by Airport security to give directions to aircraft and avoid collisions; by the captain of a boat to be guided on the high seas; or for the meteorologic service to detect precipitation, among other uses.

Currently, the type of radar that is most commonly used and that affects the population on foot is the radar that is used to carry out speed controls. In Spain, the DGT (General Directorate of Traffic) is in charge of proceeding to establish these aforementioned radars by the different provinces.

However, it must be said that these radars have “enemies”. And it is that in order to prevent drivers from being fined, apps have even emerged that warn of where the corresponding traffic cameras are located.

Radar can be classified in many other ways depending on other variables. In this way, we can talk about secondary, tracking or search radars, among others.

We cannot ignore either that, as a result of the advance of social networks, the so-called social radars have been shaped. Basically these are the mechanisms that can be used to know the follow-up that an event, character or element is having. Thus, for example, we could highlight that the ones known as Twitter hastags serve to know when a television program is having an impact and following.