Leveraging Software-Defined Radio Techniques in Multichannel Digital Weather Radar Receiver Design

Abstract

This paper describes the instrumentation, design, and implementation of an inexpensive nearly all-digital field-programmable gate-array (FPGA)-based radar receiver useful in a variety of applications including single-/dual-polarization weather radar, sidelobe cancellation, subarray modules for a digital beam-forming phased-array radar, and other applications where a compact, low-power, and low-cost receiver is needed. The design of the receiver includes a minimal analog radio-frequency front-end followed by an analog-to-digital converter utilizing a bandpass sampling technique which allows the FPGA to produce baseband in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) signals without the use of multipliers or lookup tables.