Premium
The concept of a fully electronic beamforming antenna array for modern radar systems
Author(s) -
Malafaia Daniel,
Varum Tiago,
Matos Diogo,
Matos João N.,
Vieira José
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
microwave and optical technology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.304
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1098-2760
pISSN - 0895-2477
DOI - 10.1002/mop.31228
Subject(s) - beamforming , anechoic chamber , smart antenna , antenna (radio) , electronic engineering , software defined radio , phased array , reconfigurable antenna , transceiver , radar , antenna array , computer science , omnidirectional antenna , radiation pattern , engineering , electrical engineering , telecommunications , antenna efficiency , cmos
In this article the concept of a fully electronic beamforming antenna array for radar systems based on a SDR architecture is proposed and experimentally evaluated in an anechoic chamber. The system uses 2 software defined radio (SDR) transceivers with 4 independently controlled transmitters, allowing an individual digital control of both amplitude and phase of the signal fed to each element of an antenna array. It is also proposed a beamforming method that greatly reduces the sidelobes of the radiation pattern and it was compared to traditional beam steered radiation patterns. Moreover, the proposed architecture has the advantage of being modular, and therefore easily scalable, for larger and more powerful solutions based on the presented antenna array system.