Radar Pulse Compression signal generator based on Direct Digital Synthesizer AD9956

Abstract

The development in signal processing techniques give more improvements to radar capability in detection and resolution. Pulse Compression technique is used for this purpose. This paper describes design and implementation of radar pulse compression generator using AD9956 Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS). The specification of waveform such as frequency and bandwidth can be generated by controlling the memory registers of DDS through its SPI communication ports. In this research, AD9956 DDS is used to generate short and long pulse signals that will be used to modulate the determined carrier frequency. The short pulse is formed from DDS single tone waveform mode, while the long pulse is formed from DDS linear sweep waveform mode. Both of pulse signals are digitally triggered by microcontroller to set their pulse width and frequency of repetitions. DDS operation, waveform and pulse generation technique in this proposed system is discussed in detail.