Design Of Array Radar Echo Simulator

Given the popularity of military electronic, radar plays an increasingly prominent role. Therefore, the development of radar systems becomes more and more important and urgent. During manufacture of radar system, signal processor plays an important role, so a number of experiments have to be done to test the capability of signal processor to process echo data. However, the radar experiments used to be done outfield. While testing the radar signal processor, on the one hand, the high cost and uncertain factors that were caused by environment and weather must be considered. On the other hand, the radar system is a complete system, if some problems were found, it is necessary to check the whole system to find the small problem. To avoid the above problems, radar echo simulator was used to monitor and test the radar signal processor at home and abroad. In this way, it not only saves cost, but also shortens development time.This paper discusses digital array radar simulator. The simulation system architecture uses a PC + FPGA structure, including data generation, storage and process. The data is generated by software base on PC, which includes various echo signal and noise signal. Besides, the data that will be transmitted to radar echo simulator via CPCI board, is stored in hard disk on PC; The storage and process of data is controlled and accomplished by FPGA, various interface and memory chips. One side, the radar echo simulator not only could use fiber to transmit and receive data, but also connect the radar echo simulator and PC on a LAN through Ethernet; On the other side, this design can realize conversion of the array signal into forty array signal, and add LFM signal to the received forty array signal. There are three boards in the simulation system, an interface board is mainly used for data transmission and processing with other devices, two memory boards contain a lot of NAND FLASH, which mainly used to store various data.The main contents are:(1) Disserting the choice of chip and the design of hardware circuit about radar simulator;(2) In accordance with requirements, one channel analog signal is generated by the PC, and transmitted from a computer hard disk to simulator storage device. A 40-channel analog signal was processed, and stored waiting for replying. Besides, there is a phase difference between the 40-channel data;(3) Real time signal is collected and transmitted to the storage device. Adding one way chirp signal to the real time signal;(4) Data storage device and other PC can be conveyed through the network port. About radar echo simulator, using and controlling the various interfaces are very important, which work as a nexus in the whole process of data transmission. Data transmission must depend on the interfaces. Interface timing design is the key part, which ensures the accuracy of the data transmission.