Direct Conversion DRFM

Recent advancements in high speed signal processing technology offer the possibility for significant efficiency of Electronic Attack (EA) Digital RF Memory (DRFM) systems. Typical DRFM technology utilize an RF translation to baseband, Radio Frequency (RF) sampling, storing digitized samples into memory and then reversing the process to reconstruct the RF signal prior to transmission to the victim radar. This allows for both time domain and frequency domain manipulation of the radar signal. Direct Digital conversion of RF signals has the potential to reduce DRFM size, power consumption, and unit cost and allows for a multiple parallel DRFM architecture capable of addressing emerging threat environments. SPEC"s proposed Direct Conversion DRFM (DCD) approach provides an optimized combination of direct digital RF up and down conversion from 2-18GHz, broad band DRFM performance, and multi-channel DRFM threat EA capability in minimum size, weight and power (SWaP). The direct conversion concept is based on Nyquist sampling and the use of passive anti-aliasing filters to cover a very wide frequency range with no active RF components required for up or down conversion.