Determination of Electronic Warfare Receiver's Instantaneous Dynamic Range Using Music Method

The purpose of this paper is to find the limit of instantaneous dynamic range (IDR) for electronic warfare (EW) receivers with two-signal detection capability. In order to make the limit independent of the order of music method, very high order is used. Two signal detection criterions are used. One criterion is through the eigenvalue distribution. The other is through the frequency identification using the music spectral analysis. General behavior of IDR vs. frequency shows a small IDR at small frequency separation and that IDR reaches a saturation value at some frequency separation. This is the expected result. In order to apply to practical EW receiver design, analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) with various numbers of bits are used to calculate the IDR. The calculated results for ADC with different number of bits are curve fitted to represent the IDR vs. frequency separation. These curves can be used as the limit for digital EW receiver designs.