Compact Transmitter for Pulsed-Radar Detection of On-Body Concealed Weapons

An ultra-wideband (UWB) transmitter has been designed to produce a differentiated Gaussian (monocycle) pulse in a 1:10 bandwidth (500 MHz to 5 GHz). The transmitter is a module in a compact low-cost radar for the stand-off detection of on-body concealed weapons. The detection exploits the late-time resonances in the radar return. The requirements for the transmitter are presented and the performance of the fabricated prototype is validated. The pulse peak-to-peak jitter and the noise are analyzed and shown to be comparable to those in a pulse generated using a high-performance benchtop arbitrary waveform generator (AWG).