Local Oscillators in Electronic Warfare Applications
Abstract
Local oscillators (LOs) are required whenever heterodyning is utilized in receiver architectures to convert high-frequency signals to an intermediate- frequency (IF) spectrum for ease of processing. Utilization of the heterodyning technique includes applications ranging from Electronic Warfare (EW) to radio astronomy. While EW involves the interception and exploitation of signals across the complete electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, the range of frequencies of interest in this report is from near DC and up to millimeter wave (^110 GHz). Radio astronomy shares similarities with EW in the detection of wideband EM signals ranging from radio and up to submillimetric frequencies. This technical report focuses on the requirements of LOs in EW receiver systems. In particular, LO technologies including frequency synthesizers, quartz, yttrium from garnet (YIC) and Gunn-effect electronics will be discussed in order to derive a suitable benchmark, in terms of tunability, amplitude accuracy and stability, frequency accuracy and stability, and phase noise level, for the development of photonic LOs.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA420255
Entities
People
- Linh V. Nguyen
Organizations
- Defence Science and Technology Group