Digital Methods for Cohere-On-Receive Radar Applications

Date of Award

2018

Degree Name

Ph.D. in Engineering

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Advisor/Chair

Advisor: Michael C. Wicks

Abstract

"Cohere-on-Receive" is generally known as a set of radar technologies that are used to transform a non-coherent transceiver into a coherent one by adjusting the phases of the received waveforms as they arrive at the receiver. This transformation must be performed before integration or other signal processing algorithms can be used. The non-coherence can arise from a multitude of issues, including transmission from a non-coherent high-power source such as a magnetron. Another possibility is that the target is fluctuating in some manner such that the phase of its echo is apparently random from pulse to pulse. Furthermore, the concept of "Super Coherence" is introduced, where the performance of an existing coherent radar can be improved using these coherence techniques. The techniques described in this manuscript use the general methodology of saving a reference pulse and then cohering the rest of the pulses in the Coherent Processing Interval to that reference pulse. An application of this technology to the field of Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) technology is also presented. The algorithms which are described are suitable for real-time implementation in a modern Digital Signal Processor or Field Programmable Gate Array.

Keywords

Electrical Engineering, radar, coherent, signal processing

Rights Statement

Copyright © 2018, author

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