SWaP Optimized Multiband Exciter Receiver Architecture for C/X/Ku-Band Radars

This paper discusses about SWaP (Size, Weight and Power) optimized multiband exciter receiver architecture for C/X/Ku-Band Radars. All types of Radar require "exciter" for generation of low level Radar waveform during transmission and "receiver" for filtering, amplification and frequency translation to the Intermediate Frequency (IF). IF is digitized and processed for extraction of target characteristics. Various schemes such as 2-stage or 3-stage up-conversion and down-conversion are adopted to design hardware configuration of "exciters" and "receivers" depending on the Radar operating frequency. These configurations are bulky, power hungry and have different Intermediate Frequencies for different radar bands. Hence, different sets of exciter-receiver hardware are realized for corresponding radar bands. In this paper, a SWaP optimized multiband exciter receiver architecture is worked out which can be used in all types of Radars operating in C-Band, X-Band and Ku-Band without any hardware change achieving lower size, lower weight and lower power requirement.