In service with more than 30 navies and coast guard agencies around the world, the Hensoldt UK Mk 11 SharpEye X-band and S-Band suite is a fully coherent Pulse Doppler radar for navigation and situational awareness. Here it is pictured installed on board the first-of-class Musherib OPV of the Qatar Emiri Naval Forces © Fincantieri.
safely. With a 220 kg antenna group, the X-band radar with a fully solid state coherent 200 W peak power transceiver operates at 11 to 22 rotation per minute (rpm) in surveillance mode and 30 rpm during helicopter landing operations.
Hensoldt SharpEye family Developed by Kelvin Hughes, which in 2019 became Hensoldt UK, a world leader in the development, manufacture and supply of maritime navigation and surveillance radars, the company’s core technology is the SharpEye, a radar transceiver launched in 2006, which brought military grade target detection at an affordable price to warships and offshore patrol vessels. With more than 30 navies and coast guard agencies around the world that are benefiting from this solution, the Mk 11 SharpEye X-band and S-Band suite is a fully coherent Pulse Doppler radar for navigation and situational awareness in all weather conditions
and high sea states. The SharpEye X-band transmitter (with a peak power up to 300 W while the S-band reaches 200 W compared to typical 25 kW to 30 kW of previous generation systems based on magnetron) has been the first in its class to employ GaN (Gallium Nitride) power transistors. Together with respectively 2.5 and 3.9 meters antennas, the X- and S-band SharpEye transceivers are located up mast (or down mast as option), housed in a carbon composite turning unit and bringing additional benefits such as ease of installation and high reliability. The use of a direct drive motor system rather than the traditional antenna rotator gearbox also reduces maintenance. The significant benefits of GaN transistors have been harnessed by SharpEye to directly improve the performance of the radar, enabling the visualization of land, air and seaborne targets with reduced RCS. SharpEye technology exploits the Doppler effect to determine target radial velocities. This is achieved by processing received echoes into velocity bands, enabling EDR | May/June 2022
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