Reconfigurable digital receiver for polarimetric radar with dual-orthogonal signals

Abstract

This paper outlines the work on the design of a reconfigurable receiver for the PARSAX radar. The FPGA based digital receiver samples incoming signals at intermediate frequency (IF) and processes signals digitally instead of using more conventional analog approaches. In this way it offers more robust system stability and avoids unnecessary multi-channel calibrations of analog circuits. The processing algorithms implemented in the FPGA chips can be reconfigured adaptively regarding to different transmitted waveforms, and without changing of hardware. The successful development of reconfigurable receiver has been verified by experiment and yields maximum flexibility for the whole radar system.