Mixed-Signal Integration Challenges in Complex Radar Systems
应用文章
Introduction
Radar design teams are today finding themselves at a crucial juncture. No longer can a radar design team focus solely on RF/microwave measurements when evaluating a prototype. More and more, the systems they design have become increasingly digital in nature, often employing field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), digital signal processors (DSPs) along with radio frequency (RF) components to achieve the flexibility required to switch between different waveforms and configurations. This digital section requires a separate baseband designer or design team, and must be simulated and measured using tools that differ from those traditionally used by RF designers to debug, validate and characterize intermediate frequency (IF) and RF signals. Unfortunately, the disparate design and test methodologies used by the baseband design team designing the radar signal processor and RF team designing the RF exciters and receivers often result in a host of system integration issues and testing challenges