High-resolution noise radar using slow ADC

Conventional digital signal processing scheme in noise radars has some limitations related to combination of high resolution and high dynamic range. Those limitations are caused by a tradeoff in performance of currently available ADCs: the faster is ADC the smaller is its depth (number of bits) available. Depth of the ADC determines relation between the smallest and highest observable signals and thus limits its dynamic range. In noise radar with conventional processing the sounding and reference signals are to be digitized at intermediate frequency band and to be processed digitally. The power spectrum bandwidth of noise signal which can be digitized with ADC depends on its sampling rate. The bandwidth of radar signal defines range resolution of any radar: the wider the spectrum the better the resolution. Actually this is the main bottleneck of high resolution Noise Radars: conventional processing doesn't enable to get both high range resolution and high dynamic range. In the paper we present a way to go around this drawback by changing signal processing ideology in noise radar. We present results of our consideration and design of high resolution Noise Radar which uses slow ADCs. The design is based upon generation of both probing and reference signals digitally and realization of their cross-correlation in an analog correlator. The output of the correlator is a narrowband signal that requires rather slow ADC to be sampled which nowadays may give up to 130 dB dynamic range.