Ultra-Wideband Synthesis for High-Range-Resolution Software Defined Radar

This article presents a design for implementing an ultrawideband (UWB) software-defined radar (SDRadar) using a bandwidth reconstruction technique, called frequency stacking, for a stepped frequency signal to create a synthetic wideband waveform (SWW). Practical methods of overcoming traditional limitations of SDRadar and stepped chirp radar are introduced, and the performance is demonstrated using a commercial battery-powered universal software radio peripheral (USRP) software-defined radio (SDR). Application-specific considerations are made and performance tradeoffs are demonstrated. Furthermore, the method is shown to be the coherence solution for otherwise noncoherent low-cost communications’ SDR systems. The proposed design has multiple applications in low-cost, reconfigurable ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) platforms.