9:Receivers

The Radar Receiver

The radar receiver detects echoes, down-converts them stripping

off the carrier and revealing the imposed modulation.!
!
It will consist of a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), band pass filter,
mixer/s and digitizer!
!
In modern radar systems both amplitude and phase are measured!
!
Receiver dynamic range is still a “bottle neck” in radar systems!
!
Many types of design are possible!
!
The current trend is towards RF digitization!
The Radar Receiver
The Radar Receiver
 Receiver Types

Crystal Video Receiver:!

!
Direct conversion of RF to Video. The video output is then amplified
before further processing and/or display. It has the disadvantage of
detecting broadband noise at the input which limits dynamic range.
Generally used in low cost applications.!
 Receiver Types

Superregenerative Receiver:!
!
Uses feedback to cause oscillations at the desired RF. Uses
high gain single stage circuit. Suffers from relatively poor
sensitivity, phase and frequency stability. Consequently it
suffers from high noise. Not widely used these days !
 Receiver Types

Homodyne Receivers:!
!
A portion of the transmit signal is used as a local oscillator input to a
mixer via a circulator (often called a duplexer in this configuration). It
requires the transmitter to be transmitting when the receiver is
working. Not unsurprisingly it is used in (low cost) cw applications
mainly.!
 Receiver Types

Superheterodyne receivers:!
!
The received signal from the antenna is coupled through the
duplexer to the mixer after amplification in an LNA. The local
oscillator synchronizes transmission and reception so that phase
may be determined. Sometimes two stages of mixing or down
conversion are used. Band pass filtering rejects unwanted mixing
products and out of band signals. This is much more commonly
used in advanced radar systems. The LNA output can be split into
two channels to facilitate I and q demodulation for coherent
detection.!
 Receiver Types

Digital receivers:!
!
Direct digitization at RF is still rare and the subject of on-going
research. However, second stage down conversion is used less and
less with digitization taking place at IF and a Hilbert transform
applied to extract the signal and echo induced baseband
modulations.!
!
Almost all modern radar systems will digitize received signals prior to
target detection and further processing. Indeed most radar signal
processing will assume that digital signals are available.!
!
Digital signals are more reliable and much more flexible than their
analogue counterparts. However, they are limited by dynamic range
(number of bits and linearity).!
!
One day all radars are likely to be phased arrays with each element
having direct RF digitization.!
 A typical Radar Receiver

Selex!
Demodulation and Envelope Detection
 Demodulation Types

Non-coherent Demodulation:!
!
This converts the IF signal to baseband after which display and/or
further (usually digital) processing takes places. Non-coherent
demodulation results in the amplitude of the envelope only of the
IF signal (i.e. no phase). It is used in older and simple low cost
radar systems. !
!
Diode detection provides for a low pass filtering approach which
is simple and cheap (and a bit nasty). !
!
 Demodulation Types

Non-coherent demodulation:!
!
Square law detectors are more common where the signal is
mixed with itself (which squares the signal) and then low pass
filtered. The IF is usually selected to be much higher than the
highest video frequency which simplifies selection of the lo pass
filter. !


 Demodulation Types

Non-coherent demodulation:!
!
Logarithmic amplifiers have been used in an attempt to achieve
very wide dynamic range (think dBs). They typically consist of a
chain of limiting amplifiers which form the logarithmic function.
Their outputs are summed to from the detected signal whose
voltage is proportional to the log of the input signal. 70 to 80 dBs
dynamic range can be achieved. However, it is difficult to get
perfect log conversion and this has prohibited their take up.!


 Coherent Demodulation

Coherent demodulation allows measurement of amplitude and phase

(relative the the transmitted phase). Amplitude and phase together allow
many more radar applications such as MTI, velocity estimation Imaging
and STAP (Space Time Adaptive Processing). The phase of the local
oscillator must be locked to that of the transmitted signal and must be
highly stable. !
 Coherent Demodulation

The phase of the received signal is obtained by converting the IF

signal to “in-phase and quadrature” components. These can be
represented as:!
!
I = A Cos ! !and !Q = A Sin!!
!
Where A is the amplitude of the received signal and ! is the phase
angle between the transmit and receive signals. Thus we have:!
!
2 2 !1 Q
! A = I + Q ! = tan ( )
I
Coherent Demodulation
 Coherence

Radars are inherently coherent instruments. That is to say, they

measure both the amplitude and phase from a reflecting object. !
!
Coherence is enabled in a radar system via the exciter which locks the
transmitted signal to the received signal.!
!
The precision with which amplitude and phase can be measured
determines the performance of the radar system in many applications.!
!
Oscillator signal will drift (e.g. due to temperature variations etc.). This
is usually expressed in terms of parts per million ppm). A drift of 6 ppm
would cause a velocity error estimation of a target moving at 100mph
of 0.0006mph only!!!
!
Oscillator drift is usually slow and not a great problem.!
!
!
Coherence
 Phase Noise

Any fast frequency modulation present in the radar system will degrade
coherence adversely. This is important as analysis of phase is a direct
measure of target velocity and will therefore lead to errors. It also upsets
a radars ability to cancel clutter which is necessary to reveal small
targets.!
!
Phase noise is caused by imperfect oscillators (I.e. imperfections in the
sine wave they produce).!
!
Phase noise is not usually “white” I.e. it does not have a uniform power
density.!
!
Phase noise tends to be highest at frequencies close to the carrier.!
Phase Noise
 Filter Response for Clutter
and Phase Noise

This is the frequency response of a single and double delay MTI filter
for a 1kHz PRF. Also shown are the clutter spread and phase noise. It
shows the phase noise to be increasing the amount of apparent
clutter power in the MTI filter pass-band!
 Receiver Mismatch Errors

Sources of mismatch error:!

!
•  I and Q channels not at 900!

•  I and Q channels donʼt gave equal gain!

•  There is no transmitter amplitude ripple!

•  Phase noise!
!
These sources of mismatch error can result in a degraded point
spread function, often generating undesired ghost images and
otherwise higher side-lobes. Digitization can provide a route to erro
correction.!
Receiver Mismatch Errors
 Receiver Dynamic Range

Radar echoes have a very wide dynamic range (approx. 120 dB)due to
the difference in reflectivity of targets and to the 1/R4 dependency
Receiver dynamic range is limited by both the analogue (particularly the
mixers and amplifiers) and digital (i.e. the number of bits) components.!
!
The lower limit is the noise floor of the radar system and the upper limit
non-linear effects in the amplifier or mixers.!
!
Non-linearity creates distortions in echo signals which can be confused
with real targets.!
!
Sensitivity Time Control (STC) is used to cope with the wide dynamic
range. Increasing attenuation is switched as range reduces to adjust
the available dynamic range to be optimum. A 1/R4 function would
maintain a constant amplitude for a target of fixed RCS.!
!
Radar systems often do not have sufficient instantaneous dynamic
range and this is a “bottleneck” that is still to be fully addressed.!
Receiver Dynamic Range
Receiver Dynamic Range
 Analogue to Digital Conversion

Most modern radar systems uses digital signal processing to detect or

otherwise process echo signals. This is becoming increasingly the case
with DSP entering the low cost radar types (e.g. maritime leisure) as
well.!
!
Signals may be first down converted to base band prior to digitization or
(increasingly) at IF which reduces the amount of analogue components.!
!
The sampling rate must satisfy Nyquist (or Shannon if you prefer) I.e. it
must be at least twice the highest expected frequency. If demodulation
to base band has taken place then this is the modulation frequency and
not the carrier frequency or the IF. If sampling takes place at IF then it
will be the IF plus (usually half) the modulation frequency.!
!
Oversampling is desirable.!
 Analogue to Digital Conversion

The input signal is applied to a track and hold circuit which holds the
sampled signal constant until analogue to digital conversion is
completed. The timing circuit is triggered by the sampling frequency
which governs the duration over which conversion can take place.
The limit on the aperture window is determined by the sampling speed
of the A/D and the dynamic range by the number of bits. The output is
a digital stream available for radar signal processing.!
 Analogue to Digital Conversion

The relationship between the input analogue signal and the output
digital signal is given by:!
! b
! Va = VFS (" ai 2 !i ) + qe
! i=1
!
Where VFS is the full scale (saturation) voltage of the ADC, ai is the
value of the ith bit of the digital representation (0 or 1) and qe is the
quantization error. !
!
The quantization error is designed to be less than plus or minus half the
least Significant Bit (LSB):!
b
1
Va !VFS " ai 2 !i = qe < LSB
i=1 2
 Analogue to Digital Conversion

Manufacturers specifications can be misleading if not interpreted

carefully. In general assume you have two bits less than specified!!!
!
The effective dynamic range is less as the noise floor of the radar is
typically set to trigger the first (and sometimes the second) LSB. This is to
ensure that system noise (due mainly to the LNA) can be adequately
sampled so that small targets at furthest range are detectable.!
!
Random jitter in the clocks that sample the ADC input will induce noise
and uncertainty in correct assignment of the bit. ADCs having highest
speeds and largest numbers of bits are more prone to errors.!
!
!
Analogue to Digital Conversion
Spurious freed Dynamic Range
of a Radar ADC
 Direct Digital Coherent Detection

The I and Q samples can be generated using a Hilbert transform

which provides a 900 phase shift to the digital representation of a
signal. E.g.!

!
1 # g(" ) !
1
g(t) = " g(t)
g(t) = $ #"
! "# t " " !t
Time domain! Frequency domain!
Quantization
Quantization
Quantization
 Quantization

The choice of the number of bits and the quantization step size govern
the trade-off between the dynamic range and the quantization error of
the digital signal.!
!
The dynamic range, DR, is given by:!
! b!1
! 2 "
DR = = 2 b!1
! "
Where ! is the step size and b is the total number of bits!
!
Taking the log:!
! b!1
! DR(dB) = 20 log10 (2 ) = (b !1)20 log10 (2) = 6.02b ! 6.02dB
!
This shows that the dynamic range that can be represented at the
ADC output without saturation increases be 6dB (approx.) per bit!
!
Quantization
 Further Reading

1. J.A. Scheer and J.L. Kurtz, Coherent Radar Performance Estimation,

Artech House, 1993.!
!
R.G. Lyons, Understanding digital signal processing, Prentice hall
2004.!
!
A.V. Oppenheim and R.W. Schafer, Discrete-time signal processing,
Prentice Hall, 1999.!