Many of today’s EW receivers feature sub-octave instantaneous bandwidth (IBW) that is limited by the older generation data converter.
#Digital techniques for wideband receivers free
In this article, dynamic range refers to instantaneous spur free dynamic range, the key figure of merit for receivers tasked with detecting small signals among a crowded spectrum of larger blockers. This sea change in wideband RF sensing will enable size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) benefits: higher receive and transmit channel counts at lower cost per channel, in the same or smaller sized form factors as today.Īnticipating the coming era of digital EW receivers with multi-octave bandwidth, this article discusses new challenges and considerations when designing for best-in-class dynamic range. 1 Adaptive spectral tuning will continue to shift from the RF to the digital signal processing realm. The workhorse super-heterodyne tuner will give ground to direct sample and direct conversion architectures. Most importantly, converters from Analog Devices will maintain the excellent linearity, noise performance, and dynamic range of legacy lower rate digital converters. Now for the good news: over the coming years, high sample rate analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and digital-to-analog converter (DAC) technology will usher in a wideband digital receiver architectural evolution. Alas, the EW receiver has no prior knowledge of the signal to be intercepted and thus nothing with which to correlate! It’s like searching a crowd of people for a stranger you’ve never seen before … and worse yet, he is hiding, or maybe isn’t even there! In the radar realm, receiver dynamic range benefits from matched filtering, whereby the received radar return is correlated with a copy of the transmitted signal. The incident RF band limiting employed in communications receivers is an unwanted trade for the EW receiver that seeks to process ever wider instantaneous bandwidth in less time.
#Digital techniques for wideband receivers pdf
SFDR Considerations in Multi-Octave Wideband Digital Receiversīenjamin Annino Download PDF IntroductionĮlectronic warfare (EW) receivers must intercept and identify unknown enemy signals among a congested wideband spectrum of multiple interfering signals without the benefit of dynamic range and sensitivity improvement techniques employed in communications and radar receivers.