JPH05126936A - Radar indicating machine and radar equipment using it - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To display a video at the central part of a screen in an easily visible state. CONSTITUTION:Video data stored in a video memory 40 are delayed in both the horizontal and vertical direction by means of a horizontal and vertical delay circuits 42 and 44, respectively. By mixing the non-delayed video data, video data delayed in the horizontal direction, and video data delayed in the vertical direction with each other by means of a mixer 46, a display 50 displays the post-mixing video data. The radar video is expanded in the horizontal direction by the horizontal delay and in the vertical direction by the vertical delay. Since the video expanding ratio becomes uniform at both the central and peripheral parts of the screen, the radar video becomes more easily visible especially at the central part of the screen.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a radar device mounted on a ship or the like, and more particularly to an enlarged display function of its image.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, radar devices are mounted on ships and the like. This radar device is a device in which a rotatable antenna is installed at a location on the ship with a good view, and radio waves are transmitted and received by this antenna to obtain information about targets existing in the vicinity. For example, supply a transmission pulse to the antenna,
The reflected wave of this pulse is received again by the antenna to obtain information on the surroundings.

Since the information obtained by the radar device is the information indicating the target existing in the surroundings, it can be displayed on the screen of the display. A PPI (Plan Position Indicator) or a raster scan type display has been conventionally used as a display. In recent years, the latter, that is, the raster scan method has been widely used, which enables display on a brighter screen than before.

[0004]

However, in the conventional device, there is a problem that the central part of the screen of the display (image showing the target near the ship) becomes small and difficult to see. As a means for solving this problem and displaying an image with high sensitivity and high resolution from a short distance to a long distance, functions such as pulse width switching and pulse width expansion have been conventionally known. However, even in the radar device to which these functions are added, since the antenna beam width is constant, the image at the center of the screen showing the target close to the ship is small and difficult to read. Also, as an application, a method of expanding in the azimuth direction is conceivable, but in this method as well,
There is still no effect in the very center part of the screen, and on the contrary, a new problem occurs that the image is enlarged too much in the peripheral part.

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and it is possible to display a radar image more clearly by uniformly enlarging the image both in the central portion and the peripheral portion of the screen. The purpose is to do.

[0006]

In order to achieve such an object, the radar indicator of the present invention includes a horizontal delay circuit for horizontally delaying video data in a rectangular coordinate format, and a video in a rectangular coordinate format. A vertical delay circuit that delays data in the vertical direction is mixed with undelayed rectangular coordinate format video data, horizontally delayed video data, and vertically delayed video data to mix them in the horizontal and vertical directions. A mixer for outputting video data representing a radar image expanded in a direction, and a display for displaying the radar image based on the video data output from the mixer are provided.

Further, in this radar indicator, a radar image which is not enlarged in the horizontal and vertical directions is displayed based on the video data which is not delayed, or a horizontal and vertical direction is displayed based on the video data obtained by the mixer. It is characterized by comprising means for switching between displaying the enlarged radar image and switching.

The radar device of the present invention transmits a radio wave at a predetermined timing by the antenna that is rotatable and the antenna while rotating the antenna, and generates a video signal in the distance direction from the reflected wave received by the antenna. And a radar indicator of the present invention, which is provided with means for converting a video signal output from the transceiver into an orthogonal coordinate format based on a transmission timing and an antenna direction.

[0009]

In the radar indicator of the present invention, horizontal and vertical delays are added to Cartesian format video data (for example, obtained by converting a video signal output from a radar transceiver from polar coordinates to Cartesian coordinates). Is given. When the video data having the horizontal or vertical delay and the video data without the delay are mixed by the mixer, the radar image becomes an image enlarged in the horizontal and vertical directions.
That is, when the video data delayed in the horizontal direction is mixed with the video data not delayed, the size of the radar image in the horizontal direction becomes larger, and the video data delayed in the vertical direction is delayed from the video data delayed in the vertical direction. If unmixed video data is mixed, the size of the radar image in the vertical direction becomes larger. In this way, when the radar image is displayed on the indicator based on the video data obtained by the mixer, the easy-to-see radar image display in which the central portion and the peripheral portion of the screen are uniformly enlarged is realized.

Further, when a function for selecting whether to turn on or off the above-described image enlargement function is provided, the image enlargement function can be operated as necessary, and usability is further improved. ..

[0011]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT A preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 shows the configuration of a radar device according to an embodiment of the present invention. The radar device shown in this figure includes a radar transceiver 10, an antenna 12, and a radar indicator 30. The antenna 12 is a rotatable antenna, and when the device of the present embodiment is mounted on a ship, the antenna 12 is installed at a place with a good view on the ship.

The radar transceiver 10 is composed of a motor encoder 14, a transmitter 20 and a receiver 22.
The motor encoder 14 rotates the antenna 12 and outputs an azimuth signal S _θ indicating the azimuth to the data indicator 30. The transmitter 20 generates microwaves according to the transmission control signal S _t supplied from the data indicator 30,
It is fired to the surroundings by the antenna 12. The antenna 12 emits the microwave supplied from the transmitter 20 to the surroundings and receives the reflected waves from the targets existing in the surroundings. The reflected wave received by the antenna 12 is received by the receiver 22 as an electric signal.
Is supplied to. The receiver 22 amplifies and video-detects the signal from the antenna 12, and outputs it as a video signal S _V to the radar indicator 30. Note that the receiver 22 is controlled by the radar indicator 30 by the reception control signal S _r according to the measurement distance range, surrounding conditions, and the like.

The radar indicator 30 includes a control circuit 32, a coordinate conversion circuit 34, a video processing circuit 36 and a video memory 4.
It has 0. The control circuit 32 transmits the above-mentioned transmission control signal S _t and reception control signal S _r to the transmitter 20 and the receiver 2.
2 is a control circuit for supplying each of the two. The video processing circuit 36 performs processing such as quantization and noise removal on the video signal S _v supplied from the receiver 22, and outputs it to the video memory 40 as video data. Video processing circuit 3
The timing of writing the video data from 6 to the video memory 40 is given by the control circuit 32. On the other hand, the write address to the video memory 40 is given by the coordinate conversion circuit 34, and the addressing timing is also given by the control circuit 32.

The coordinate conversion circuit 34 is a circuit for controlling the write address of the video data to the video memory 40 to convert the polar coordinate format information obtained by the radar transceiver 10 into the rectangular coordinate format video data. The direction signal S _θ is input from the motor encoder 14 to the coordinate conversion circuit 34, and the control circuit 32 outputs
A signal is provided which represents the time elapsed since the microwave transmission. In other words, the coordinate conversion circuit 34 is provided with information regarding the distance R to the target and the azimuth θ, and the circuit 34 converts the information into XY coordinates and converts the information into the video memory 40.
The write address of the video data to is requested.

When the coordinate conversion circuit 34 and the video memory 40 obtain the video data in the rectangular coordinate format, this data is input to the horizontal delay circuit 42, the vertical delay circuit 44 and the mixer 46 according to the features of the present invention. .. The horizontal delay circuit 42 has, for example, a delay time approximately equal to the transmission pulse width (pulse width of the microwave emitted from the antenna 12 by the transmitter 20). Further, the vertical delay circuit 44 has a built-in line memory and delays the video data supplied from the video memory 40 by one line. Mixer 4
Reference numeral 6 designates video data supplied from the video memory 40 without delay, video data delayed by one pulse width supplied from the horizontal delay circuit 42, and vertical delay circuit 44.
It is mixed with one line delayed video data supplied from When the data obtained as a result of this mixing is displayed on the screen of the display device 50, it becomes an image that is doubled in the horizontal and vertical directions. It is also possible to obtain a larger enlargement ratio by adding delay circuits of two stages and three stages. A signal for turning ON / OFF the image enlargement is input to the mixer 46.

FIG. 2 shows the effect of image enlargement in this embodiment.

First, when a signal for turning off the image enlargement is input to the mixer 46, the video data output from the video memory 40 is not mixed with the video data subjected to the horizontal delay or the vertical delay, and the display 50. Is displayed on the screen. In this case, as shown in FIG. 2A, the target in the central portion is displayed relatively small on the screen of the display 50. On the other hand, when a signal for turning on the image enlargement is supplied to the mixer 46, the image in the central portion and the image in the peripheral portion are both uniformly enlarged as shown in FIG. Therefore, in the case of this embodiment, the user can turn on the image enlarging function as necessary to display the radar image which is easy to see.

[0019]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Since the video data is horizontally and vertically delayed and mixed with the undelayed video data to display the radar image, the image enlargement ratio is uniform in both the center and peripheral parts of the screen. Therefore, the target can be displayed more easily in the center. Further, this effect becomes remarkable in a high definition screen.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a radar device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the functions and effects of this embodiment, and FIG. 2 (a) shows a screen when image enlargement is turned off.
(B) is a figure which respectively shows the screen when image expansion is turned on.

[Explanation of symbols]

 10 radar transmitter / receiver 12 antenna 30 radar indicator 42 horizontal delay circuit 44 vertical delay circuit 46 mixer 50 indicator

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A horizontal delay circuit for horizontally delaying Cartesian coordinate format video data, a vertical delay circuit for vertically delaying Cartesian coordinate format video data, and an undelayed Cartesian coordinate format video. A mixer that mixes data, horizontally delayed video data, and vertically delayed video data to output video data representing a horizontally and vertically magnified radar image, and a mixer output A radar indicator, comprising: a display for displaying a radar image based on video data. 2. The radar indicator according to claim 1, wherein a radar image which is not enlarged in the horizontal direction and the vertical direction based on the video data which has not been delayed is displayed.
A radar indicator equipped with a means for switching whether to display a radar image enlarged in a horizontal direction and a vertical direction based on video data obtained by a mixer. 3. A rotatable antenna, a transmitter / receiver for transmitting a radio wave at a predetermined timing by the antenna while rotating the antenna, and generating a video signal in a distance direction from a reflected wave received by the antenna. A radar device according to claim 1, further comprising means for converting a video signal output from the machine into a rectangular coordinate format based on a transmission timing and an antenna direction.