Low-cost Electronically Scanning Antenna with Randomly Selected Delay Line Lengths

摘要

A radar architecture that requires a single analog-to-digital converter and no active phase shifters was developed that can electronically search a three-dimensional (3-D) volume and provide range resolution and angular resolution proportional to the Rayleigh criterion for a given bandwidth and aperture size. The architecture is based on a frequency scanning antenna feed with delay lines whose lengths are randomly selected in combination with digital signal processing algorithms. I investigated the feasibility of the architecture to perform target localization in position and velocity by analyzing one-dimensional (1-D) antenna patterns and graphing a cost function based on an L2-norm. A single realization of the system was selected, simulated, and analyzed. The range and velocity resolution seen in the plots of two- dimensional (2-D) slices of the cost function are consistent with the position and velocity resolution derived from the Rayleigh criterion. For a low-cost solution, signals with Doppler shifts that exceed a given threshold should be transmitted to a central computer for more processing.