PARSAX: high-resolution doppler-polarimetric fmcw radar with dual-orthogonal signals

Abstract

The article describes the IRCTR PARSAX radar system. It is an S-band high-resolution Doppler polarimetric FMCW radar utilizing dual-orthogonal sounding signals. The signals allow for measuring in one sweep all elements of the radar targets polarization scattering matrix simultaneously. PARSAX characteristics are: modular system set-up, highly-optimised linearity and sensitivity of the RF front-end receiver, use of a flexible multi-channel arbitrary waveform generator as sounding waveforms source, high-resolution analogue to digital conversion of the received signals at sufficiently high intermediate frequency and FPGA-based programmable digital multi-channel receiver. The paper shows that PARSAX is a unique radar research platform for studying arbitrary sounding waveforms with bandwidth up to 50 MHz and processing algorithms in Doppler-polarimetric radar.