Design and performance of an Airborne Ice Sounding Radar Front-End

This paper describes the design and performance of the RF Front-End of an airborne P-band ice sounding radar. The ice sounder design features newly developed compact high power RF components: high power in-phase and out-of-phase power dividers, a high power SPDT PIN switch and a high efficiency high-power LDMOS power amplifier with >60% power-added efficiency across a relative bandwidth of 20% at a centre frequency of 435 MHz. The system comprises also a microstrip patch antenna array, a digital signal generator, a digital front-end and a control unit. The system is in the assembly and testing phase. In May 2008 the first data acquisition campaign will take place in Greenland.