Multi-channel receiver and optical data link for radar systems with digital beamforming

Abstract

A multi-channel receiver has been developed for radar systems with digital beamforming. The design achieves a low cost, small volume, and low dissipation per receiver channel, combined with large dynamic range and a high noise immunity. Important aspects are the shielding of all internal connections by a specially designed packaging, a high degree of integration including A/D-converter and digital pre-processing in the receiver module, and a fiber optical link to transmit the output data to the signal processing. The article describes the design of the multichannel receiver and shows some experimental results obtained from a production unit.