A software defined radar platform for waveform adaptive MIMO radar research

MIMO Radar systems that can adaptively select independent waveforms on transmit antennas can provide spatial and temporal diversity gains for improved detection, classification and tracking capability in challenging propagation environments. In this paper we discuss design, implementation and validation of a Software Defined Radar (SDR) test bed to derive MIMO waveform adaptive radar research. The OSU micro SDR platform features a custom integrated X-Band RF frontend with two independent transmit and a single receive channel multiplexed to four receiver antennas with bandwidth of 250 MHz and a digital back-end with an FPGA and an embedded PC for real-time receive processing and waveform scheduling.