Experimental reconfigurable radar video correlator

A reconfigurable FPGA-based radar video correlator having a selectable length from 8 to 32 pulse repetition intervals and freely settable detection criteria is described in this paper. The developed unit uses an Altera^® Cyclone II FPGA Starter Development Board as its hardware and provides, besides the typical correlator function, an automatic tune-and-lock-in to the feeding radar's pulse repetition frequency. A phase locked 250 MHz frequency is available for timing. A microcontroller circuit suitable for rapid laboratory tests and basic adjustments is also shown. This setup is able to generate both digital and simulated raw radar video having selectable recurrence probabilities to enable correlator threshold tuning.