The APY-016K is a gallium nitride (GaN) based active electronically scanned array (AESA) fire-control radar designed by Agency for Defense Development (ADD) and Hanwha Systems for the KAI KF-21 Boramae fighter aircraft. The early prototype was developed with 1,400 transmit/receive modules (TRM) with 14 kW of power, but by the time of the later prototype, the design had been changed to an antenna unit with 1,152 TRMs.
The development program was conducted from August 2016 to August 2020 and has been produced by Hanwha Systems since August 2025.
Design The APY-016K has air-to-air, air-to-ground detection and tracking capabilities, as well as synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) and terrain-following radar (TFR) modes, and interleaved modes to operate two different modes simultaneously The antenna units operated at the X-band frequency are composed to a total of 1,152 transmit/receive modules (TRM).
Transmit/receive module One transmit/receive module is assembled with one compact brick-type radiating element in the form of a square 4 millimeters wide. The module system is also applied with solid-state power amplifier (SSPA), high-speed signal processing, low-noise amplifier (LNA), and 6-bit phase shift technology.
Operating frequency: X-band (8–12 GHz) Tx gain: >36 dB Rx gain: >26 dB Noise figure: <4.5 dB Input P1dB Rx: <37 dBm (maximum) Pulse width: <200 µs (maximum) Duty cycle: 15% Rise time: <100 µs Communication interface: Parallel RS-422
Radar modes The radar system has three air-to-air, air-to-ground, and air-to-sea main modes, each of which is operated in a selective sub-mode.
Main mode Submode Operational interleaved mode Air-to-air Search while track (SWT) SAR/TFR High priority precision track (HPPT) SAR/TFR Raid assessment (RA) SAR/TFR Air combat maneuvering (ACM) TFR Air-to-ground Real beam ground map (RBGM) SAR/TFR Doppler beam sharpening (DBS) SAR/TFR Ground moving target indication (GMTI) SAR/TFR Ground moving target track (GMTT) SAR/TFR Air-to-ground ranging (AGR) SAR/TFR Air-to-sea Sea surface search (SSS) SAR/TFR Sea moving target track (SMTT) SAR/TFR
References
See also
List of radars
External links