Effect of principal environmental parameters on performance of LFMCW photonic radar during transmission

Noncoherent and coherent systems of linear frequency modulated continuous wave photonic radar under normal environmental conditions are constructed by co-simulation. In particular, the simulation models of different atmospheric humidity conditions are constructed to analyze the quantitative relationship between the system’s ability to detect targets and humidity. It is discussed the relationship between detection distance and channel parameters under the premise of reasonable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In particular, the SNR of the noncoherent photonic radar is reduced to less than 10 dB when relative humidity >40%, which the laser power is 8 dBm and the detection distance is 100 m. However, the coherent photonic radar has a good performance of more than 21.7 dB. The results show that the noncoherent system is more susceptible to atmospheric humidity than the coherent system, and the heterodyne detection coherent system can achieve longer detection distance and better weak echo signal detection capability.