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In radio electronics, especially
In radio electronics, especially radar
Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...
terminology, slant range or slant distance is the distance along the relative direction
In geometry, direction, also known as spatial direction or vector direction, is the common characteristic of all ray (geometry), rays which coincide when translation (geometry), translated to share a common endpoint; equivalently, it is the commo ...
between two points. If the two points are at the same level
Level or levels may refer to:
Engineering
*Level (optical instrument), a device used to measure true horizontal or relative heights
* Spirit level or bubble level, an instrument designed to indicate whether a surface is horizontal or vertical
*C ...
(relative to a specific datum
Data ( , ) are a collection of discrete or continuous value (semiotics), values that convey information, describing the quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols t ...
), the slant distance equals the horizontal distance.
An example of slant range is the distance to an aircraft flying at high altitude with respect to that of the radar antenna. The slant range (1) is the hypotenuse of the triangle represented by the altitude of the aircraft and the distance between the radar antenna and the aircraft's ground track
A satellite ground track or satellite ground trace is the path on the surface of a planet directly below a satellite's trajectory. It is also known as a suborbital track or subsatellite track, and is the vertical projection of the satellite's ...
(point (3) on the earth directly below the aircraft). In the absence of altitude information, for example from a height finder
A height finder is a ground-based aircraft altitude measuring device. Early height finders were optical range finder devices combined with simple mechanical computers, while later systems migrated to radar devices. The unique vertical oscillating ...
, the aircraft location would be plotted further (2) from the antenna than its actual ground track.
See also
*Ranging
Length measurement, distance measurement, or range measurement (ranging) all refer to the many ways in which length, distance, or range can be measured. The most commonly used approaches are the rulers, followed by transit-time methods and the ...
*Spherical range
The great-circle distance, orthodromic distance, or spherical distance is the distance between two points on a sphere, measured along the great-circle arc between them. This arc is the shortest path between the two points on the surface of the ...
*Line-of-sight_propagation
Line-of-sight propagation is a characteristic of electromagnetic radiation or acoustic wave propagation which means waves can only travel in a direct visual path from the source to the receiver without obstacles. Electromagnetic transmission in ...
References
* * Antennas {{Wireless-stub