ABSTRACT
As it was described in Chapter 2, pulse integration will very likely improve the receiver SNR. Nonetheless, caution should be exercised when attempting to account for how much SNR is attained through pulse integration. This is true for the following reasons: First, during a antenna scan, a given target will not always be located at the center of the radar beam (i.e., have maximum gain). In fact, during a scan, a target will first enter the antenna beam at the 3dB point, reach maximum gain, and finally leave the beam at the 3dB point again. Thus, the returns do not have the same amplitude even though the target RCS may be constant and all other factors that may introduce signal loss remain the same.
