Advanced Radar Waveform Generator

Author(s):

William Diehl and Neal Tesny

Abstract:

We introduce the Advanced Radar Waveform Generator (ARWG). The ARWG is part of the Software Defined Electronic Warfare Family of Systems. It is implemented in the commercial AMD-Xilinx Gen3 Radio Frequency System-on-Chip in the ZCU208 Evaluation board form-factor. It provides a flexible platform for generating user-defined radar pulses with complex features such as intrapulse modulations, near real-time custom waveform generation, pulse-to-pulse frequency agility, user-defined amplitude, frequency and phase modulation, and composite pulse group generation. It includes multiple user interfaces including serial command line interface and Python-based graphical user interface. The ARWG is connected to a supporting personal computer (PC) via a Gigabit Ethernet interface and can therefore interact with powerful applications residing in PCs or across networks. The basic design and major functions of the ARWG are discussed and example features are showcased.