The use of field programmable gate arrays in high performance radar signal processing applications

Many new radar systems have processing requirements that exceed the capabilities of conventional embedded digital signal processing hardware and software. Certain processing functions, such as digital beamforming, are particularly demanding and were historically only feasible in custom designs built with custom application specific integrated circuits. Advances in the speed and size of field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) have allowed many high end signal processing applications to be solved in commercially available hardware. This paper provides an overview of the process of designing signal processing functions in FPGA, and highlights the design of several signal processing functions that have been prototyped using some common tools.