Stability Improvements of Radar Transmitters

The U.S. Navy requires highly modern and sophisticated radar system to accomplish missions in littoral water region where near shore terrain and weather in extreme sea-state conditions present challenging clutter environment for moving target indicator (MTI) operations. An important source of this difficulty is caused by the waveform distortions on the radar transmitters. An efficient and effective method to correct the distortions caused by the transmitter is to provide transmitter waveform compensation on the received signal. In this proposal, we will develop a two-step adaptive waveform compensation algorithm based on the adaptive digital signal processing techniques. The developed technique will reduce the inter-pulse and intra-pulse waveform distortions caused by the transmitter power amplifiers and waveguide switching hybrids. The objective of the proposed approach is to maximize the effectiveness of the transmitter waveform compensation for the observable error sources (e.g., CFA, TWT etc.) while reducing received waveform distortions generated by the radar transmitter systems. The developed algorithm is stable, reliable and feasible for real-time implementation.