| 摘要 |
<p>An efficient digital wideband waveform generation and signal processing system for multi-beam electronically scanned antenna array (ESA) radar systems. The digital waveform generator (50) first produces a series of waveform phase angles corresponding to the phase angles of a common signal to be transmitted by the ESA. Then, for each antenna element, the waveform phase angles are adjusted to steer the beam by adding a time delay and a phase adjustment. A digital signal is then produced for each antenna element by applying a cosine function to the adjusted phase angles. In the illustrative embodiment, this is accomplished using a cosine look-up table (14). Each digital cosine wave is then stored in a serial memory buffer (16A to 16L) in preparation for conversion to digital. Each of digital signals is passed through a digital to analog converter (18A to 18L) and an RF filter (20A to 20L) at each antenna element. The resulting analog signals are each amplified by a power amplifier (22A to 22L), and then sent through a wideband circulator (24A to 24L) to an antenna element (26A to 26L). On receive, at each antenna element (26A to 26L), a wideband linear amplifier (30A to 30L) and an RF filter (32A to 32L) provide rejection of out of band signals while providing amplification and signal conditioning for the following analog to digital converter (34A to 34L). The resulting digital signals (one for each element) are sent through the (36A to 36L) which separate each digital signal into N frequency channels. A digital beam formation unit (38A to 38N) for each frequency channel then forms multiple digital simultaneous beams by combining like frequency channels from each antenna element with an added phase adjustment.</p> |
