Imagine a board with
one big bulb of light , and then a board with
100 bulb of light and each bulb is a different color (transmitter / frequency), all of these tiny 100 odd color bulbs would work together in order to better track a moving enemy target - meanwhile the enemy plane might not be able to detect that someone has a lock on onto them that easily
.
Also it makes sense , logically its really 100 radars like modules put together on board vs one big module 100 tiny radars vs 1 big one and tiny pieces can split the task of tracking individual objects easier by sharing
The main difference lies in multiple transmitters with their own frequency looking for enemy plane signals vs the phase array which runs off same frequency and same signal
In Terms of Advantages the AESA system is typically better than PESA because of following factors :
1.because the Antenna Elements contain its own
Transmitter and Receiver modules and located Right behind the Radiator, it would have lower or even No accidental loss , unlike her PESA sister which still require a connection to be made between its RF source to Radiating elements , incidental loss may occur.
2. High fault tolerance, failure of some modules will not hamper the operation of Radar (typical AESA Radar may contain 100++ Elements) however the entire device would fail if the failure occurs in 10% of total module counts.
3.
No Single Point Failure , since basically each modules in active Version contains its own transmitter and Receiver modules, the passive device however since it still use single Transmitter device like Traveling Wave tube , failure of the transmitter may hamper the RADAR operations
Read more:
Who is better active electronically scanned array radar or passive electronically scanned array radar
