Honeywell PC SS radar, wow again!

Wow, Panbo works! While it’s pure coincidence that two really interesting—though quite different—solid state marine radars were announced yesterday, I got an early head’s up on both and, better yet, Panbot “DavidV”—who turns out to be a principal developer of the Honeywell prototype ss radar seen above—has already helped us understand how it compares to Navico Broadband (see comments). Unfortunately Honeywell’s “Programmable, Pulse Compression, X-Band Radar,” which David just presented at the eNavigation Conference, is not yet even scheduled for production, but, wow, I think you’ll agree that’s likely, if they can get the costs reasonable. The collage above, and bigger here, compares a Furuno 2117 commercial radar working at its .75 nm range (though showing more) with the 40 watt solid state set at 5 nm range, but zoomed in. The boat moved a bit between screen shots but the difference in range resolution seems obvious and amazing.

As you may know, radars typically increase their pulse length, and hence decrease their range resolution, as they shift to larger areas of view. But pulse compression solid state is not typical. Vacanti—who,  aside from duties as an Aerospace Fellow is Honeywell, is also involved in boat design software—says this prototype Honeywell gear “has a range resolution of 35’ at 5 nm and degrades to 62’ at 10 nm worst case vs 600′ in most magnetrons using 1.2 uSec pulses at that range. Our system provides 145’ resolution at 20 nm when the standard radar is already at 600 – 700′. We can improve that substantially.” You can see some evidence of the longer range resolution below, bigger here, and the screen image is constrained, I think, by pixel count. Wow. Here’s hoping that this technology (derived from high-end aircraft weather radar) soon becomes a yacht product, even if it’s an expensive one.