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Introduction to Radar

Presentation · May 2014

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29761.04962

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 Introduction to Radar

Dr A.M. (Tony) Ponsford

SMIEEE and Co-Chair AESS - Ottawa
Engineering Fellow &
Site Technical Director,
Raytheon Canada Limited
May 2014

Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
 AGENDA

1. Introduction to Radar
2. Some Basic Radar Types
3. Radar Range Equation
4. Operating Bands and Usage
5. Antennas
6. Radar Cross section
7. Radar Signal processing
8. Unwanted signals
9. Radar Output
10. Tracking

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 Introduction to Radar

The Invention That Changed the World: How a

Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second
World War and Launched a Technological
Revolution - Robert Buderi,

5/13/201 Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

3 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
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 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
 The German scientist Christian Hülsmeyer registered a patent for an
apparatus called the Telemobiloscope on the 30 April 1904 as a ship
detection device intended to help avoid collisions in fog. Despite a
successful demonstration where a ship was detected at 5 km, a market
could not be developed for the system.

Christian Hülsmeyer Telemobiloscope

 The concept of radar did not re-emerge until 1922, when Marconi
suggested that radio waves could be used to detect ships and in the
1930's the French liner “SS Normandie” was fitted with a 'Radar' to guard
against possible collision with icebergs in poor visibility.
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 RADAR - INTRODUCTION
 Radar (acronym for RAdio Detection And Ranging) is an
object-detection system that uses radio waves to determine
the range of an object.

The term RADAR was coined in 1940 by the United States

Navy
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 PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION

A radar system is typically enhanced to provide direction,

altitude, speed and object size

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 WW2 – RADAR COMES OF AGE
 At the start of WW2 many nations were experimenting with radar – however the
most famous system was Britain's Chain Home Air Surveillance System. These
early systems were quite rudimentary but added significant information to the
overall air defence picture. The true strength of the Chain Home system was
the integration of data obtained from the network of multiple radars and
information obtained from other sources.

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 THE BIG BREAK THROUGH
 Early Radars operated in the HF and VHF band – making them very
large and of limited application.
 In 1940 John Randall and Harry Boot from the University of Birmingham
(UK) developed the cavity magnetron. This was the first practical device
for producing the ultra-short radio waves at adequate power to enable the
system to work. This enable radars to be designed small enough to fit
into aircraft.

Original prototype cavity Raytheon developed first mass

(Univ. Birmingham) production magnetrons
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 WORLD’S FIRST CONTINUOUS ATC
SYSTEM

Installation of the 15, ASR-1 radars began in

January 1958. Starting in Ottawa, radars
were subsequently installed at airports in
Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg,
Thunder Bay, Halifax, Toronto, Montreal,
Moncton and Seven Islands etc.
Raytheon Canada personnel, 1958 and the AASR-1

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 Radar Types

Radars come in all shapes and sizes and are

used in vast array of applications and
configurations

Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

10 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
 RADAR TODAY
 The modern uses of radar are highly diverse, including air traffic control, radar
astronomy, air-defense, antimissile, marine radars, aircraft anti-collision systems;
ocean remote sensing, outer space surveillance, weather, altimetry and flight
control systems; guided missile target locating systems; and ground-penetrating
radar for geological observations, automotive etc.,

FPS-132 Early warning ASR-10SS PSR with

Deep-space radar Airborne radar
Radar co-mounted MSSR

Space-based radar OTH radar Medical radar Automotive radar

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 RADAR TYPES - 1
 Primary Surveillance Radar: PSR receives it's own emitted signals as
an echo
 Secondary Surveillance Radar: SSR requires a transponder that
responds to interrogation by transmitting a coded reply signal. This
response can contain significantly more information than a primary radar

SSR originated from the WW2 “Identify Friend or Foe” System

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 RADAR TYPES - 2

 Monostatic
– Collocated Tx and Rx
– Typically Operate in Pulsed Mode
– Circles of constant range
𝑐𝑡
𝑅=
2
 Bi-Static
– Separate Tx and Rx Sites
– Operate in FMCW mode
– ellipse of constant bi-static range R
R = 𝑟1 + 𝑟2 − 𝐿

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 RADAR MODULATION
 Pulsed Radars: transmits a short pulse after
which the system listens for echoes prior to
radiating a new signal. Pulse radars typically
use co-located or common transmit and
receive antennas. Pulses can be phase or
frequency modulated
 Continuous-Wave (CW) Radar: typically
transmits a constant amplitude and frequency
tone. The echo signal is received and
processed. Measures speed only (Police
Radar Gun) – Distance cannot be measured.
E.g. they are used as speed gauges for police.
 Modulated CW- Radar: transmitted signal is
constant in amplitude but modulated in the
frequency. Transmission and Reception are
concurrent. Generally low power or used in a
bi-static configuration.

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Radar Range Equation

The Radar Range equation calculates the Signal-to-Noise ratio of the received signal
at a given range. This determines the capability for detecting and tracking given
targets for a particular system configuration.

Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

15 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
 BASIC FREE SPACE RADAR RANGE
EQUATION
 The radiated power PT from a vertical dipole antenna with a gain in the
desired direction GT relative to an isotropic antenna produces a power
intensity F at the distance d:

 The receiving antenna with a gain GR has an effective absorbing aperture

Ar of:

 Thus the power received at a distance d by an antenna with a free space

gain GR is
GT PT GR 2
Pr  
: 4d 2
4
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 RADAR RANGE EQUATION: CONT.
 If the receive antenna at d is now replaced with a target of cross section
 and the receiving antenna relocated to be along side the transmit
antenna, the received power will be given by:

GT PT 1 GR 2
Pr    
4d 2
4d 2
4
 Which simplifies to
𝐺𝑇 𝑃𝑇 𝐺𝑅 2 
𝑃𝑟 =
(4)3 𝑑4

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 NOISE LIMITED SCENARIO WITH
LOSSES
 The radar bandwidth is given by the reciprocal of the pulse
length 1/ (Hz) and the noise level is given by

1
𝑁 = 𝑘𝑇𝑠


Where k is Boltzmann’s Constant (1.38 x 10-23 watt-sec/oK) and Ts is the system noise
temperature oK

 Let all other losses including atmospheric losses be recorded

as L , Then the Signal to Noise ratio is represented as

𝑆 𝐺𝑇 𝑃𝑇 𝐺𝑅  2 
=
𝑁 (4)3 𝑑4 𝑘 𝑇𝑠 𝐿

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 BLAKE CHART

5/13/201
http://www.eng.uah.edu/~frederic/IPT2005_AIAA/Pwrpdf/Mullins.pdf
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 Operating Bands and Usage

Radars operate through out the RF spectrum and must be designed

to be compatible with other users of the Spectrum. In general
radars operating a low frequencies have long range but poor
resolution (due to low bandwidth). Radars operating at higher
frequency have shorter range but greater resolution (due to
availability of higher bandwidths).

5/13/201 Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

20 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
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 OPERATING BANDS AND USAGE

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Radar Antennas
• The antenna converts electric power into radio waves, and vice versa
• It is usual for the radar antenna to concentrate these radio waves into or
from a specific direction and to do this in an efficient manner
• The antenna is the key in providing an estimate of the angle of arrival
• Reciprocity Theorem states that the receive and transmit properties of an
antenna are identical

Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

22 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
 RADAR ANTENNAS

ASR – primary and Secondary Early warning Radar Tracking Transponder

Marine Navigation Radar Surface wave HF Radar Airborne Radar

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 ANTENNAS – BASIC TERMINOLOGY
DIRECTIONAL GAIN is the ratio between the amount of energy
propagated in desired direction relative to the energy that
would be propagated if the antenna were not directional
(Isotropic).
 The directional gain of an antenna is independent of
whether it is used for transmit or receive.
EFFECTIVE APERTURE is the area presented to the radiated or
received signal. The greater the aperture the higher the
directional gain
ANTENNA EFFICIENCY is the ratio of the power radiated or
dissipated within the antenna and the power delivered to the
antenna. A high efficiency antenna has most of the power
present at the antenna's input radiated away. A low efficiency
antenna has most of the power absorbed as losses within
the antenna, or reflected away due to impedance mismatch.
BEAM WIDTH is the angular range of the antenna beam
pattern in which at least half of the maximum power is
contained
SIDE LOBES are the lobes (local maxima) of the far field
radiation pattern that are not the main lobe

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 REFLECTIVE HORN ANTENNA

Parallel Lines, draw from a line perpendicular to the axis of a parabola

to the parabola and hence to its focal point will all be the same length

When used with a parabolic reflector or lens antenna, the phase center of
the horn is usually placed at the focal point of the reflector, with the 3 dB
points of the horn's radiation pattern set to be at the edge of the reflector.

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 ARRAYS AND BEAMFORMING

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 ARRAY RESPONSE

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 AZIMUTH RESOLUTION
Azimuth resolution is determined by the
antenna beamwidth. For a linear array
the beamwidth is related to the
aperture as measured in terms of
wavelength, the half-power or 3 dB
beamwidth is

B  /a radians
where  is the radar carrier frequency and a is
the aperture length and extends to d/2 beyond
the elements, where “d” is the inter-element
spacing
A narrow beamwidth requires a large aperture which can be
impractical when using space or airborne assets to provided
high resolution images
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 SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR
 A Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a coherent radar system
which utilizes the flight path of the platform to synthesize an
extremely large aperture to generate high-resolution remote
sensing imagery.
 Inverse SAR (ISAR) uses the movement of the object to create a
synthetic aperture. ISAR typically used for target classification

SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR SAR IMAGERY ISAR IMAGERY

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 POLARIZATION
Polarization is the orientation of the electric field of the electromagnetic
wave.
 Vertical antennas radiate
vertically polarized signals
 Horizontal antennas radiate
horizontally polarized signals
 Conventional Feed horns
radiate linearly polarized
energy across the major
dimension of the horn.
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/~schuur/radar.html

Sea clutter can be reduced by using horizontal polarization,

while rain clutter is reduced with circular polarization.
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Radar Cross Section

The Radar Cross Section is a measure of how detectable an object is.

Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

31 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
 RADAR CROSS-SECTION (RCS)

A number of different factors determine how much energy

returns to the source including:

 Relative size of the target (in relation to

the radar wavelength
 Target material
 The incident angle
 Reflected angle
 The polarization of radiation in respect
to the orientation of the target

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 RCS REGIONS

 In the Raleigh region the

wavelength is similar or greater to
the physical size of the object and
the magnitude of the reflection is
proportional to the size of the object.
 In the Resonance region the
wavelength is comparable in size to
the object
 In the Optical Region the size of the
object is significantly greater than
the radar wavelength

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 VESSEL RADAR CROSS SECTION

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 RF STEALTH TECHNOLOGY

In general a stealth target is designed to The First Stealth

eliminate corner reflectors and minimize the Aircraft
amount of energy that is reflected back to
the illuminating radar.
At microwave the RCS is primarily
determined by the skin of the target, whilst
at HF the RCS is primarily determined by
the structure.

Corner Reflector Enhances a

Targets RCS
Microwave
Radar signal
The German Horten Ho 229 was a
prototype fighter/bomber that
completed a successful test flight
in 1944.
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Radar Signal Processing

Signal processing is undertaken to improve the signal to noise ratio

and to reject unwanted signals such as clutter and interference.
Signal processing maximizes the probability of detecting the wanted
signal whilst minimizing the probability of false alarms and missed
detections.

Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

36 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
 WAVEFORM DESIGN: PULSED RADARS

A long pulse is required to maximize the average radiated power and hence SNR.
 Range Resolution (𝑟) is proportional to the pulse length (): 𝑟 = 𝑐 
2

 Pulse compression is a technique used to improve the range resolution without

loss of average power.
 However for monostatic radar, the receiver has to be gated off during
transmission, resulting in a blind range equivalent to the uncompressed range
resolution
 Many radar system use a combination of long and short pulses to achieve near
and far coverage.

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 MATCHED FILTERING AND PULSE
COMPRESSION
PHASE MODULATED
Pulse compression is a technique used to increase the
average radiated power without degrading the range
resolution.
 This is achieved by modulating the transmitted pulse
and then correlating the received signal with the
transmitted pulse
 Pulse compression is an example of matched
filtering

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 COHERENT/NON-COHERENT
PROCESSING
A target normally reflects numerous pulses and the
radar probability of detection can be enhanced by
summing the returned pulses.
 Non-Coherent Integration
Non-coherent systems do not use phase
information. Pulses are summed in Power, noise
has a Rayleigh distribution.
SNR improvement ~ (n)
where n is the number of pulses summed
 Coherent Integration
Coherent Integration preserves phase information
and pulses are summed in Voltage. Noise has a
Gaussian distribution
SNR improvement ~ (n)
where n is the number of pulses summed

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 UNWANTED SIGNALS:
INTERFERENCE is independent of the radar and includes co-channel
interference, adjacent channel interference and impulsive noise.
 Interference will be rejected by the matched filter

CLUTTER is dependent on the radar and is the

result of unwanted echoes
 Clutter will pass through the matched filter
 Generally do not have the characteristic thumb
tack ambiguity function of a point target.
 Dominant forms of clutter include:
– Ocean Clutter, Rain Clutter,
Ionospheric/atmospheric Clutter & Land clutter.
Weather Radar

One radar’s clutter may be another radar’s wanted signal

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 CLUTTER SUPPRESSION: EXAMPLE
Moving Target Indicator (MTI) techniques are used to isolate targets from
ground clutter. MTI subtracts the received signal from two successive pulses
to reduce returned signals from slow moving objects.
– When the moving target is located at different distance from the stationary or slow moving
objects, the phases of radar return pulses from target will be different while the phases of
radar return pulses will be the same for stationary clutter.
Moving Target Detector1. MTD offers the advantages of being able to isolate
targets from both ground, weather and clutter.
– The principle incorporated in all MTD processors is the use of Doppler filter bank, which
enables targets and clutter to be separated in the Doppler frequency domain. The output of
these filters have separate thresholds optimized for their associated Doppler frequency
band.
– It is important to note that the Doppler filters inherently perform the process of coherent
integration.
1US Patent #7,741,992, A MOVING TARGET DETECTOR FOR RADAR SYSTEMS, Raytheon Canada Limited, J. Wang & E.
Brookner, June 22, 2010 2010, International Patents Pending

Pulse to Pulse averaging reduces number of false detections due to

randomness (low pass filer). Scan-to-Scan reduces number of slow clutter (high
pass filter)
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 PULSE DOPPLER RADARS

 Enhance Signal to Noise ratio

by summing over many pulses
 Separate near stationary clutter
from moving targets
 Measure Range Rate/Doppler
(radial velocity)
 Discriminate multiple targets at
a common range based on
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/mkx/?n=using-radar
radial velocity
2𝑣
𝑓𝑑 = On the assumption that v is << than c


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 WINDOWING OR WEIGHTING FUNCTION
Windowing (also known as Weighting or Tempering) is used to reduce discontinuities
in discrete samples and hence minimize side-lobe ambiguities in the Azimuth,
Doppler & Range

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 INTERFERENCE SUPPRESSION:
EXAMPLE

REQUIRES POWER AMPLIFIERS

WITH EXCELLENT GAIN AND THE
PHASE LINEARITY

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 AMBIGUITY FUNCTION
 The ambiguity function is an
important tool to study the
performance of radar.
 The ambiguity function of a
waveform represents the output
of the matched filter when the
specified waveform is used as
the filter input.
 Ideally the detector should
provide a simple “Thumb Tack”
response – that is all of the return
energy is concentrated into a
single point. Unfortunately this is
never the case and energy is
spread over range, azimuth and
Doppler, resulting in potential
ambiguity and false plots.
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 DETECTION

A detection is declared if
the magnitude of the
output exceeds a
threshold.
A Constant False Alarm
Rate (CFAR) algorithm
sets the threshold so that
the rate at which the false
alarm occurs is constant.

Constant False Alarm Rate: Maximizes the probability of detection

while maintaining a constant false alarm rate.
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 RADAR SENSITIVITY
Characterized by the Probability of Detection (Pd) and the Probability
of False Alarm (Pfa)
Typically the Pfa is set for thermal 1

noise – this determines the Pd. 0.9

Pd is also determined by the 0.8

nature of Target 0.7
• Marcum – non fluctuating

Probability of Detection
• Swerling 1 & 3 – model correlated 0.6

fluctuations 0.5

• Swerling 2 & 4 - model 0.4

uncorrelated fluctuations
0.3
non-fluctuating, pfa=4.5e-5
0.2 swerling 1, pfa=4.5e-5
non-flucturating, pfa=1.8e-3
0.1 swerling 1, pfa=1.8e-3

0
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Signal to Noise Ratio (dB)

Detection Theory sets the Threshold level to achieve a given Pd for a set Pfa
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 DETECTION - CFAR
The cell under test is centred in the middle of the
range/Doppler window. A guard window is employed, to
ensure that the target is not present in the region used to
estimate the noise floor.
• An optimum Cell Averaging CFAR (CA-
CFAR) is used for a homogeneous
background.
• An Ordered Statistic Constant False
Alarm Rate OS-CFAR is used for non-
homogeneous environments. The
algorithm ranks all samples within the
CFAR window. If the test cell is greater
than (Threshold*OS_rank), then a
detection is registered.

Further reading: IEEE AESS Lecture 6, Detection of Signals in Noise, Dr

Robert O’Donnell
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 PLOT EXTRACTION

 The plot extractor receives CFAR detections across range, azimuth and
Doppler at a given time to generate a single plot that is forwarded to the
Tracker.
 As the antenna scans any one target, there may be threshold crossings
at one or more Doppler filter outputs, in several inter pulse periods,
different CPIs and perhaps in adjacent range cells. The function of the
plot extractor is to correlate all these threshold crossings, grouping all
those which appear coming from the same target (can be 100 detections
for one target).
 The plot extractor generates target reports comprising range, azimuth,
elevation, amplitude and radial velocity information, on all validated
targets. The most common method of correlating CFAR hits or detections
is known as the sliding window processor which employs a sophisticated
correlation process - Centre of Mass Correlation.

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Radar Output

Output of a radar system is map of signal

intensity

Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

50 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
 RADAR OUTPUTS

PPI scan SAR IMAGE Ionospheric Probing

Weather Radar Ground Penetrating Tracking

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 ONE RADAR HEAD CAN PRODUCE
MULTIPLE PRODUCTS

Raytheon’s SeaVue Maritime Patrol Radar

Tracking

The association of consecutive radar

observations of the same target into a time
sequence of positions

Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

53 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
 TRACKER
 A track is formed by associating consecutive plots that lie within the
neighbourhood of the predicted future position of the previous plot or
track.
 The Tracker outputs a "smoothed " target location based on the
weighted average of the predicted and measured locations.

Initial 2nd Update Subsequent Updates

Detection
New Predicted Location based on
Neighbourhood Neighbourhood Smooth track

Predicted
Initial Plot 2nd Plot Location Third Plot
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 Thank-you

5/13/201 Copyright. Unpublished Work. Raytheon Company.

55 Customer Success Is Our Mission is a registered trademark of Raytheon Company.
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