A PRELIMINARY STUDY OF KLYSTRON DISTORTION IN A CHIRP RADAR SYSTEM

Abstract

A study was made of the effects of klystron saturation, and phase and amplitude distortion, on the performance of a wideband high-power CHIRP radar system. Mathematical analysis of a general non-linear model for a klystron indicates that satisfactory operation of the radar system can still be achieved in the face of the grossly non-ideal character of the tube, with suitable restrictions, if appropriate compensation is applied. Extraneous paired echoes in the signal at the klystron input (whether present because of previous distortion, or deliberately introduced by a transversal equalizer) are shown to have a specific relationship with paired echoes at the klystron output. A FORTRAN computer program has been written to simulate the performance in a CHIRP system of any suitable klystron (or other high-power amplifier tube, such as a twystron or TWT). The program simulates a pure CHIRP signal of that bandwidth and delivers plots of the weighted compressed pulse that would appear at the receiver output. In addition, by inspection of the output compressed pulse plots, one can estimate transversal equalizer settings to cancel the spurious sidelobes, introduce the equalized CHIRP pulse into the program in place of the former undistorted input, and observe the degree of compensation in the output pulse. The report includes reproductions of the output plots generated by the simulation program, for a representative set of klystron data.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 28, 1966
Accession Number
AD0646346

Entities

People

  • H. M. Heggestad

Organizations

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Amplifiers
  • Bandwidth
  • Carrier Frequencies
  • Chirp Radar
  • Computer Programs
  • Computer Simulations
  • Computers
  • Couplings
  • Differential Equations
  • Distortion
  • Filters
  • Low Pass Filters
  • Matched Filters
  • Power Amplifiers
  • Radar
  • Time Domain

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Electronics Engineering
  • Phased Array Antenna Design.