Scatter and Doppler Effect of Wind Power Plants to Land Radars

Abstract

Wind power plant installations at different scales are in an increasing pattern starting from year 2000. A curiosity has been raised about 4-5 years ago for if wind turbines interfere with radars. The interference occurs when wind turbines reflect radar waves and cause missing targets and blind regions on radar images. Doppler radars are most used to discriminate between the return from a desired target and that from undesired objects, usually ground clutter [1]. There are so many resulting effects of interference such as shadowing, damage to radar equipment, larger radar cross section (RCS) and missing desired targets, etc. Both radar and wind power plant mitigations are available. But still, there is no overall solution, only case by case treatment. RADAR is an acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging, it will be used as "radar" throughout this paper.