Tutorial Review of an L Band Radar Transceiver for use with a Software Defined Radar Baseband System

This paper describes careful design and testing of an L Band radar transceiver, with a strong tutorial element. The transceiver forms the baseband (158 MHz) and first upconversion to L Band (1.3 GHz) of an eventual multiband radar. The receiver features direct sampling at 158MHz, and the system, an instantaneous bandwidth of 100MHz. The baseband is integrated to a software defined radar that provides the transmit waveforms and sampled output. The results from the various tests show that the hardware performs close to expectations and is suitable for the prototype sensor. Improvements to the sensor are suggested and a study of the behaviour of the sensor with an added amplification stage is made. Finally possible applications as well as future work is suggested.