Digital beamforming developments for the joint NASA/Air Force Space Based Radar

@inproceedings{citeulike:2801380, abstract = {The Space Based Radar (SBR) program includes a joint technology demonstration between NASA and the Air Force to design a low-earth orbiting, 2/spl times/50 m L-band (1.26 GHz) radar system for Earth science and intelligence-related observations. A key subsystem aboard SBR is the electronically-steerable digital beamformer (DBF) network that interfaces between 32 smaller subantenna panels in the array and the on-board processing electronics for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Moving Target Indication (MTI). In this paper, we describe the development of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based DBF processor for handling the computationally intensive inner-product operations for wideband, coherent beamforming across the 50 m length of the array. The core functions of the DBF-the CORDIC (Coordinate Rotation Digital Computer) phase shifters and combiners-have been designed in the Verilog HDL (hardware description language) and implemented onto a high-density Xilinv Virtex II FPGA. This design achieves real-time processing at an input data rate of 25.6 Gbit/s. Tests with an antenna array simulator demonstrate that the beamformer performance metrics (0.07/spl deg/ rms phase precision per channel, -35.2 dB peak sidelobe level) will meet the system-level requirements for SAR and MTI operating modes.}, author = {Fischman, M. A. and Le, C. }, booktitle = {Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2004. IGARSS '04. Proceedings. 2004 IEEE International}, citeulike-article-id = {2801380}, doi = {10.1109/IGARSS.2004.1369123}, journal = {Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2004. IGARSS '04. Proceedings. 2004 IEEE International}, keywords = {beamformer, digital, radar}, pages = {690}, posted-at = {2008-05-15 12:37:51}, priority = {2}, title = {Digital beamforming developments for the joint NASA/Air Force Space Based Radar}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS.2004.1369123}, volume = {1}, year = {2004} }

TY - CONF ID - citeulike:2801380 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2801380 TI - Digital beamforming developments for the joint NASA/Air Force Space Based Radar T2 - Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2004. IGARSS '04. Proceedings. 2004 IEEE International JF - Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2004. IGARSS '04. Proceedings. 2004 IEEE International VL - 1 EP - 690 N2 - The Space Based Radar (SBR) program includes a joint technology demonstration between NASA and the Air Force to design a low-earth orbiting, 2/spl times/50 m L-band (1.26 GHz) radar system for Earth science and intelligence-related observations. A key subsystem aboard SBR is the electronically-steerable digital beamformer (DBF) network that interfaces between 32 smaller subantenna panels in the array and the on-board processing electronics for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Moving Target Indication (MTI). In this paper, we describe the development of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) based DBF processor for handling the computationally intensive inner-product operations for wideband, coherent beamforming across the 50 m length of the array. The core functions of the DBF-the CORDIC (Coordinate Rotation Digital Computer) phase shifters and combiners-have been designed in the Verilog HDL (hardware description language) and implemented onto a high-density Xilinv Virtex II FPGA. This design achieves real-time processing at an input data rate of 25.6 Gbit/s. Tests with an antenna array simulator demonstrate that the beamformer performance metrics (0.07/spl deg/ rms phase precision per channel, -35.2 dB peak sidelobe level) will meet the system-level requirements for SAR and MTI operating modes. KW - beamformer KW - digital KW - radar AU - Fischman, MA AU - Le, C PY - 2004/// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS.2004.1369123 ER -