94 GHz pulsed coherent radar for high power amplifier evaluation

摘要

We present the design and characterization of a 94 GHz pulsed coherent radar to be used for the evaluation and demonstration of novel wideband, high power vacuum tube amplifier technology. The radar is designed to be fully coherent and exploits a low phase noise architecture to maximize Doppler performance. We selected to use horn-fed Fresnel zone plate lens antennas (FZPs) with 4-level phase quantization as a low cost method of realizing large aperture (0.5 m) antennas. The measured performance of these FZPs agrees closely with the design predictions and exceeds that obtainable with a Cassegrain of an equivalent size.