An arbitrary waveform generator for SAR test-bench application

Abstract

Function and performance simulation is an effective method for the development and verification of modern radar modes. Gathering radar raw data during flight trials is an essential but expensive way. In order to minimize such costs, synthetic radar raw data at an early system design stage is adopted widely. In this paper, an arbitrary waveform generator for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) test-bench application is presented. This waveform generator uses high speed multi-DSPs to accelerate the processing to obtain a near real-time baseband echo signal of SAR, and a DDS based frequency synthesizer is used to shift the signal to the operating band. By this way, a lot of system parameters and different target features is simulated and verified. Some result waveforms gained with data created for certain test scenarios by this generator are presented.