Surface movement radar

It is used by air traffic controllers to supplement visual observations.

It may also be used at night time and during low visibility to monitor the movement of aircraft and vehicles.

[1] SMR is typically presented as a video blip, overlaid onto a plan view map of the airport showing features such as the runways and taxiways, grass areas and buildings.

The SMR may be augmented by callsigns to identify each target, and provide warnings in the event of potential conflicts between aircraft on the runway (see AMASS).

To achieve this, SMR uses very short transmitter's pulse length of typically 40 nanoseconds.