Wideband radar waveforms that employ spread-spectrum techniques were investigated and experimentally tested. The waveforms combine bi-phase coding with a traditional LFM chirp and are applicable to joint SAR-GMTI processing. After de-spreading, the received signals can be processed to support simultaneous GMTI and high resolution SAR imaging missions by airborne radars. The spread spectrum coding techniques can provide nearly orthogonal waveforms and offer enhanced operations in some environments by distributing the transmitted energy over a large instantaneous bandwidth. The LFM component offers the desired Doppler tolerance. In this paper, the waveforms are formulated and a shift-register approach for de-spreading the received signals is described. Hardware loop-back testing has shown the feasibility of using these waveforms in experimental radar test bed.

Date Published: 14 May 2016
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 9843, Algorithms for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery XXIII, 984308 (14 May 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2224768

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9843:
Algorithms for Synthetic Aperture Radar Imagery XXIII
Edmund Zelnio; Frederick D. Garber, Editor(s)