Direct digital synthesis applications for radar development

A chirp synthesizer promises to have a great impact on waveform generation and local oscillator (LO) configurations for next-generation radar architectures. The flexibility in waveform control provided by the synthesizer offers the potential for improved radar performance. The synthesizer allows the generation of waveforms with a wide range of carrier frequencies, chirp rate, pulse widths, and pulse repetition frequencies. The variation of these parameters allows the radar to transmit different waveforms to achieve various missions such as target acquisition, tracking, or classification. The synthesizer's flexible waveform control provides a means for motion compensation, reducing ambiguities, and correction of nonlinearities in the transceiver's frequency response. Waveform distortion due to propagation path and component and signal processor errors can also be reduced by application of the synthesizer to perform certain error correction techniques. These features are realized in a small lightweight package that can be utilized in various radar scenarios. The paper discusses the salient features of the new chirp synthesizer and its application in various radar configurations.