Wideband Scalable Multi-channel Digital Receiver/Exciter (DREX)

Colorado Engineering, Inc. (CEI) proposes to develop techniques for calibrating and cohering multiple wideband DREX channels that are scalable, embeddable, and suitable for real-time implementation. CEI will leverage its expertise with radar systems, embedded hardware, and signal processing to research and define solutions that address amplitude and phase imbalances, group delay, and sample location uncertainty. Next generation Ballistic Missile Defense radars are slated to be based upon highly digitized sub-arrayed digital beamforming architectures and Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output radar technology. Both approaches require perfect calibration and coherency across channels to achieve their full benefit, but the physical reality is that hardware is never perfect, performance drifts over time and temperature, and therefore channels will not have identical phase and amplitude responses. Under this proposed program, CEI will research and develop techniques to calibrate and cohere multiple wideband DREX channels. The approaches will scale from a handful to hundreds of channels and facilitate embedded processing implementations with real-time performance. The effort will include the development of a parametric model of multichannel DREX imbalance and its effect on radar systems performance. The proposal project will also employ scalable, modular receiver/exciter technology developed by CEI under an MDA-sponsored SBIR Phase I/II as a test bed.