Development of a new software-defined S-band radar and its use in the test of wavelet-based waveforms

A new software-defined S-band radar (SDSR) has recently been developed at the Air Force Research Laboratory. The system is built upon individual off-the-shelf components, devices, and instruments, and the center of the architecture is an Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG). The AWG can be programmed to generate various kinds of radar waveforms, which are mixed with a carrier to create S-band radar signals. The AWG can be interfaced with a computer which runs on MatLab or LabView for software definition of radar waveforms. Furthermore, the computer can be connected to the Internet for receiving data from remote users. As a result, the new SDSR can be used to support studies of radar waveforms in a large area by remote users. The characteristics of the radar system are studied and the performance of the system is optimized by selecting the parameters of the building components. The newly developed SDSR is used to test the wavelet-based radar waveforms, which verifies the theoretical results produced earlier.