How do police radar detectors work – Get the escape ideas!

Radar Detectors

Are you using the radar detectors on highways or city? Do you want to exceed the speed limits? For this, you must know that how do police radar detectors work, it will help you a lot in using the device without worries.

The police radar is a small but smart gadget. It is just a rays emitting device which counts the speed of the vehicles. Its counter device is the police radar detector. The main purpose of this is to inform the drivers about the presence of police radar.

With the increased use of the vehicles and the daily accident routine, the use of police radar is common everywhere in the world. And now, people know more about police radar as compared to the past few years.

O Yes! I want to tell you a good point.

The drivers are not bound to drive their cars at a slow speed. They can manage their speed according to geographical and speed camera location.


Before going into the details of how do police radar detectors work, you should have knowledge about the working of police radar for thorough understanding.

How police radar is used?

The speed gun consists of a radio transmitter and receiver integrated into one device. In police radar, electromagnetic waves are produced by the oscillating current. Antennas at the radar used to transmit these signals into the air.

When these rays come back, the receiver picks them and converts these electromagnetic signals into the electric current again and then their frequencies are analyzed by the speed gun.

Monitoring of vehicle

The emitted radio waves have a certain specific frequency that ranges in the allowed speed limit. When these broadcasted electromagnetic waves hit the car in their path, they bounce back and with the altered frequency.

The far moving car decreases the original frequency while the towards moving car increases the frequency. The radar gun read these frequencies and detects the speed of a car in question.

How do police radar detectors work?

The police radar detector has two types. We will focus on their working one by one to clear your confusion.

Basic police radar detector

The police radar detectors are the specific devices that work as the simple receiver for the rays that are emitted by the police radar.

The rays are spread out in the air after emerging from the radar gun and the detector in the car picks these rays before coming into the range of the police radar.

Note that,

The air is filled with multiple types of broadcasted signals like AM, FM, television, and police radar. All these signals have a specific frequency range, so the radar detector picks the one coming from the police radar.

At this point the detector lets its alarm give a signal after analyzing the received signal. This signal may be in the form of light, sound, or the specific arrows on the digital screen.

The amazing radar detector,

The market has some more advanced police radar detectors. These detectors work dually. First, they receive signals, and second, they emit signals.

Received signal induces the alarm and transmits signals that get mixed with the original signal coming from the radar. When this mixed-signal hit the radar receiver back, then the radar system takes a bit longer time to analyze the car speed.

You can say that this amazing technology has made the radar confused.

LIDAR Detectors

Laser speed gun (or LIDAR) uses the light signals in place of radio waves as the transmitting rays. With the wavelength of 905 nm and 30 ns pulses, these rays lie in the infrared signals.

You should know that these infrared signals cannot be detected by the basic radar detectors. So you need the compatible one with the laser speed gun.

On the dark side,

The efficiency of the laser radar detector is small. The main reason is the beam divergence which is high for radar and low for LAIDR type.

More the divergence and spreading from the source radar, the more will be the detection by the radar detector.

The police focus the emerging beam on the car and take the reading.


Some LAIDR detector uses the jamming capability in which the detector not only detects the signal but also transmits the signal to the LAIDR radar along with the original signal received. In this way, the LAIDR gun gets confused and does not give an instant reading.

Final Words

With the vast use of the radar gun, the demand for radar detector has been increased.


The market is full with the updated version of radar detectors. These detectors give multiple features along with 3D protection and laser detection.

You cannot get the all features from a signal radar detector. But, enjoying the maximum features with a single detector is possible.

For example, various brands offer the dual detector that functions both as a radar detector and a laser detector.

Our recommendation,

We suggest you pick the detector that offers you both types of detection, i.e., radar and laser. We cannot ignore their other features like alert kind, the technology used, and the protection system. It all depends on your priority. That sets according to your driving location.

In the end,

The choice is all yours. Have a good knowledge of your requirement and then stay confident with your choice.

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