Increased Beam Bandwidth Product All-Digital Polarimetric Phased Arrary Radar Mobile Testbed
Abstract
Increased Beam Bandwidth Product All-Digital Polarimetric Phased Array Radar Mobile TestbedThe University of Oklahoma Advanced Radar Research Center The overarching goal is for the University of Oklahoma~s Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC) to provide the Navy with a flexible, mobile truck-mounted aperture that can be used to demonstrate a variety of radar modes within the S-band, especially beam bandwidth product studies. The team~s studies seek optimal approaches that depend primarily on factors such as the number of elements in the array, the number of beams required, and the total bandwidth capacity, or beam bandwidth product of the array. One example of the confluence of the ARRC~s innovative hardware, digital signal processing, and software is seen in the ARRC~s Horus project which has the original goal with NOAA of creating an S-band, all-digital, polarimetric phased array radar. A new version of this radar has the flexibility to provide numerous new modes to support a variety of the Navy~s needs. Horus is unique because it allows fully-polarimetric TX and RX at every channel to support these primary functions: radar, communications, real-time calibration, etc.The proposed project builds upon a team~s mobile system that currently has 4 line-replaceable units (LRUs). Based on the budget of this proposal, the project will provide 19 LRUs and servers for real-time processing capabilities. With 19 new LRUs and 2 existing LRUs, a 5x5 grid will be populated with 21 LRUs in a symmetric fashion, leaving 2 spares. It is noted that each LRU houses eight Octoblades. The Octoblades are where virtually all of the radar electronics reside. Each OctoBlade, which drives an eight-element column of the LRU~s high-performance antenna array with nearly ideal polarization along the principal planes through careful design, consists of a metal cooling plate with PCBs on each side to house a total of 16 GaN-based frontends (> 10 W per element, per polarization), eight dual-channel digital transceivers, four front-end FPGAs for processing, and two FPGAs for control.In summary, the major deliverable of this project is an aperture that provides increased beam bandwidth product. With the hardware in place, studies and implementations to increase the beam bandwidth product of this all-digital polarimetric phased array can begin. The beamformer is a two-step process derived from column level beamforming and 2nd stage beamforming. Subsequently, once the beams are formed, real-time processing can be achieved. The proposal accounts for mechanical design, mechanical assembly, truck mounting, thermal designs, data processing/control, etc. Horus is a system that is software definable and conveniently reconfigurable to help address a bounty of diverse needs, including contested spectrum, multifunction communication/radar, etc., to name a few. Increased beam bandwidth product will significantly foster research into these areas.Approved for Public Release.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 23, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912326
Entities
People
- Mark Yeary
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of Oklahoma