Time Modulated Ultra-wideband Phased Array and SAR Radar

The key innovation of this proposal is development of a single chip T/R module based on Time Modulated Ultra-wideband (TM-UWB) radar. Low cost components which can measure delays down to 3 picoseconds are now available, and these now make it practical to build TM-UWB radar and communication systems which have no carrier signal. The only signals transmitted are single pulses. Impulses in the time domain generate very wide bandwidth signals in the frequency domain, and the signals generated by our current hardware have bandwidths in the gigahertz range. Because of this wide bandwidth, TM-UWB radar and radio is virtually impossible to detect and difficult to jam. TM-UWB radio requires no frequency allocation since energy is effectively transmitted on a wide band of frequencies simultaneously. Multiple non-interfering channels can be implemented in a single radio, hence very high data rates can be achieved, and the conventional problems with multipath do not affect TM-UWB. Because all that is transmitted is binary pulses, implementation of electronically steerable phased array systems is easy and effective. True time delay, the goal of past phased array development, becomes easy to achieve with TM-UWB radio and radar.