DSP APPLICATIONS OF RADAR

Digital signal processing (DSP) is concerned with the representation of signals by a sequence of numbers or symbols and the processing of these signals. Digital signal processing and analog signal processing are subfields of signal processing. DSP includes subfields like: audio and speech signal processing, sonar and radar signal processing, sensor array processing, spectral estimation, statistical signal processing, digital image processing, signal processing for communications, control of systems, biomedical signal processing, seismic data processing, etc. The goal of DSP is usually to measure, filter and/or compress continuous real-world analog signals. The first step is usually to convert the signal from an analog to a digital form, by sampling it using an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), which turns the analog signal into a stream of numbers. However, often, the required output signal is another analog output signal, which requires a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). Even if this process is more complex than analog processing and has a discrete value range, the application of computational power to digital signal processing allows for many advantages over analog processing in many applications, such as error detection and correction in transmission as well as data compression. DSP algorithms have long been run on standard computers, on specialized processors called digital signal processors (DSPs), or on purpose-built hardware such as application-specific integrated circuit (ASICs). Today there are additional technologies used for digital signal processing including more powerful general purpose microprocessors, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), digital signal controllers (mostly for industrial apps such as motor control), and stream processors, among others. In this presentation, we are basically dealing with the DSP applications of Radar. RADAR: - Radar is an object-detection system that uses electromagnetic wavesspecifically radio wavesto identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish, or antenna, transmits pulses of radio waves or microwaves which bounce off any object in their path. The object returns a tiny part of the wave's energy to a dish or antenna which is usually located at the same site as the transmitter. Radar basically does the operation of detecting long distance targets, such as enemy aircrafts, mountains and mountain peaks in case of commercial piloting and it is also done to detect weather conditions and also to find out the velocity of the moving object. Radar does this detection by sending pulses at high frequency towards the target and these pulses get

reflected from the target towards the radar. Depending upon the time taken by the pulse to come back and forth, the position of the target is determined. Also, in between the targets there are other objects due to which there is unwanted echo and these objects are called clutter and the echo is known as the clutter echo. The velocity of the object is calculated by Doppler processing, which is basically the change in frequency of the reflected pulse from the original frequency which depends on the velocity of the object or the target.

BASIC DSP RADAR BLOCK DIAGRAM

The block diagram shown above is the basic block diagram of the DSP radar processor. Here, the main processing is done by the tracking computer shown in the diagram. It decides the transmitting frequency, provides triggering pulses for various circuits. Also it controls the timing of various circuits in the timing and receiving end. As shown, the scheduling circuit decides the time gap in which the pulses are to be sent towards the target, the signal generator provides with the necessary sine wave pulses. The transmitter circuit does the process of modulation and up converts the frequency and sends it towards the target. At the receiving end, the receiver detects the reflected echo signal, amplifies this signal to a higher level, so that the noise can be easily rejected. The received analog signal is first converted in to a digital signal with the help of an A to D converter and from here the main digital processing starts. The signal obtained from A to D converter is given to a pair of

matched filters. The main operation of matched filter is to compare the given reference which is normally tuned to clutter with the target echo and hereby to reject the clutter echo and give only the target echo at the output After the matched filter block comes the threshold detection circuit. This circuit makes sure that there is no false triggering of the tracking computer because sometimes what happens is that echo from an unwanted object like bird is obtained by the radar, now the echo signal from the bird may be high, but in order to reject this bird echo the threshold level should be high enough so that echo received from the bird can be easily rejected and only the echo from the target can be detected. The output of threshold detection circuit is given to the tracking computer. The tracking computer basically provides with the various digital operation which is performed on the signal. After the operation of the signal, the range of the target from the radar, the rough shape and image of the target, the velocity of the target and quite a few other features of the radar can be determined.

SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR

One of the best examples of DSP radar is the synthetic aperture radar which provides digital processing of the received signals. Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar whose defining characteristic is its use of relative motion between an antenna and its target region to provide distinctive long-term coherent-signal variations that are exploited to obtain finer spatial resolution than is possible with conventional beam-scanning means. It originated as an advanced form of side-looking airborne radar (SLAR). SAR is usually implemented by mounting, on a moving platform such as an aircraft or spacecraft, a single beam-forming antenna from which a target scene is repeatedly illuminated with pulses of radio waves at wavelengths anywhere from a meter down to millimeters. The many echo waveforms received successively at the different antenna positions are coherently detected and stored and then post-processed together to resolve elements in an image of the target region. In a typical SAR application, a single radar antenna is attached to an aircraft or spacecraft so as to radiate a beam whose wave-propagation direction has a substantial component perpendicular to the flight-path direction. The beam is allowed to be broad in the vertical direction so it will illuminate the terrain from nearly beneath the aircraft out toward the horizon. Resolution in the range dimension of the image is accomplished by creating pulses which define very short time intervals, either by emitting short pulses consisting of a "carrier" frequency and the necessary "sidebands", all within a certain bandwidth, or by using longer "chirp pulses" in which frequency varies (often linearly) with time within that bandwidth. The differing times at which echoes return allow points at different distances to be distinguished. The total signal is that from a beamwidth-sized patch of ground. To produce a beam that is narrow in the cross-range direction, diffraction effects require that the antenna be wide in that dimension. Therefore the distinguishing, from each other, of co-range points simply by strengths of returns that persist for as long as they are within the beam width is difficult with aircraft-carryable antennas, because their beams can have linear widths only about two orders of magnitude (hundreds of times) smaller than the range. (Spacecraft-carryable ones can do 10 or more times better.) However, if both the amplitude and the phase of returns are recorded, then the portion of that multi-target return that was scattered radially from any smaller scene element can be extracted by phase-vector correlation of the total return with the form of the

return expected from each such element. Careful design and operation can accomplish resolution of items smaller than a millionth of the range, for example, 30 cm at 300 km, or about one foot at about 200 miles. The process can be thought of as combining the series of spatially distributed observations as if all had been made simultaneously with an antenna as long as the beamwidth and focused on that particular point. The synthetic aperture simulated at maximum system range by this process not only is longer than the real antenna, but, in practical applications, it is much longer than the radar aircraft, and tremendously longer than the radar spacecraft. Image resolution of SAR in its range coordinate (expressed in image pixels per distance unit) is mainly proportional to the radio bandwidth of whatever type of pulse is used. In the crossrange coordinate, the similar resolution is mainly proportional to the bandwidth of the Doppler shift of the signal returns within the beamwidth. Since Doppler frequency depends on the angle of the scattering point's direction from the broadside direction, the Doppler bandwidth available within the beamwidth is the same at all ranges. Hence the theoretical spatial resolution limits in both image dimensions remain constant with variation of range. However, in practice, both the errors that accumulate with data-collection time and the particular techniques used in post-processing further limit cross-range resolution at long ranges.

CONCLUSION: -The recent advances in signal processing are blended with many more algorithms to present an up-to date perspective and can be implemented in Digital Signal Processor because of their flexibility and the ability to attain high precisions.