Modern radar pulse compression techniques

Radar pulse compression techniques and the general characteristics of coding/decoding devices are summarized, including ultrasonic, electromagnetic and electronic passive linear FM devices. The development of surface acoustic wave (SAW) dispersive filters has resulted in a new class of pulse compression devices which offer performance, size, and cost advantages compared to competitive techniques. The design versatility allows straightforward realization of non-linear FM waveforms such as the 'tangent FM' and 'hyperbolic FM' waveforms, therefore, eliminating the signal-to-noise reduction resulting from the weighting filter required to minimize range sidelobes in linear FM systems. Other specialized techniques such as FM predistortion, internal weighting for range sidelobe reduction, and V-FM can be routinely implemented. The configuration of the reflective array dispersive filter and the essential elements of a SAW delay line are shown.