FPGAs make a radar signal processor on a chip a reality

Radar signal processors heavily tax the capabilities of conventional microprocessor based signal processing systems. Higher performance systems using custom silicon cost too much for the typically small production volumes, and are not flexible enough for research applications. Field programmable gate arrays offer the performance of custom silicon while maintaining the economies and flexibility of the microprocessor based solutions. Recent devices possess the density and performance to realize a complete radar signal processor in a single FPGA, including complex down-conversion of the IF to base-band. Performing the down-conversion and matched filtering in the FPGA eliminates the specialty chips previously needed for these functions, making it possible to use commercially available FPGA boards. Our system packs 4 channels into a pair of FPGAs. Each channel (a demodulator, a matched filter and a Doppler pulse pair processor) executes over 5 billion multiplies per second.