Radar Upgrade Kit for Digital Beamforming Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing phased array radar systems face challenges in controlling synchronization of phase shifting across transceivers, reducing beam directionality control, and upgrading components is costly and complex, often requiring substantial changes to hardware and software, which can disrupt operations.
Innovation Solution
A radar upgrade kit with an upgraded signal processing pipeline that includes sampling converters, field-programmable gate arrays, and graphics processing units, providing digital beamforming capabilities without replacing existing hardware, and allowing modular upgrades to enhance radar performance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Stability of the object's composition
If analog beamforming is used in phased array radar systems, then the system can maintain compatibility with legacy hardware, but synchronization control of phase shifting across transceivers becomes increasingly difficult as the number of antennas grows
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the analog beamforming system with a digital beamforming system. This substitution allows for precise electronic control of phase shifting across all transceivers through software, eliminating the synchronization difficulties inherent in analog systems while accommodating any number of antennas without increasing complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the fundamental operating parameters from analog to digital domain. By digitizing the beamforming process, the system gains precise control over phase and amplitude parameters for each antenna element, enabling stable synchronization even as the number of antennas increases.
2Measurement precision
If the number of antennas is increased in phased array radar systems, then detection capability is improved, but control over directionality of beams decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces analog beamforming with digital beamforming, enabling precise electronic control of beam directionality. The digital system can independently control phase and amplitude for each antenna element, providing superior directionality control even as the antenna array size increases, thereby maintaining ease of operation while improving detection capability.
3Reliability
If upgrades are performed at each sub-blocks of the beamforming system, then specific subsystem performance can be improved, but costs increase and complexity of integration increases due to upstream effects on other portions of the radar system
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the beamforming function into independent digital signal processing channels, one for each antenna element or subarray. This segmentation allows individual subsystems to be upgraded or modified independently without affecting others, reducing integration complexity while maintaining the ability to improve specific subsystem performance.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements a universal digital beamforming architecture that can handle multiple functions and configurations through software. This universal platform allows different subsystems to be upgraded independently while maintaining compatibility with the overall system, reducing integration complexity compared to dedicated analog beamforming paths.
4Stability of the object's composition
If digital beamforming is implemented in existing radar systems, then control over beam directionality and synchronization is improved, but substantial changes to legacy hardware and software are required
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the beamforming function from the analog hardware domain and relocates it to the digital signal processing domain. This extraction allows the core beamforming logic to be implemented as software or firmware that can run on existing digital signal processors, minimizing hardware changes while achieving improved synchronization control.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a digital signal processing intermediary layer between the antenna array and the existing radar processing chain. This intermediary performs digital beamforming operations and interfaces with legacy hardware through standard connectors, enabling improved control without requiring substantial hardware replacement.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and rack includes an antenna subsystem having a preexisting processing pipeline that receives radio frequency returns and an upgraded signal processing pipeline that performs detection processing for the antenna subsystem. The upgraded signal processing pipeline couples to the preexisting processing pipeline. The upgraded signal processing pipeline includes sampling converters to sample the radio frequency returns of the antenna subsystem, field-programmable gate array devices to generate detection data of the radio frequency returns at full-bandwidth and full-range of the antenna subsystem, graphics processing units to apply algorithms to the detection data of the radio frequency returns, and a signal processor configured to perform operations on the sampled radio frequency returns. The operations can include sampling returns, down-converting sampled detections, filtering detections, digitizing radio frequency returns, and applying algorithms to generate output data. The output data can be provided to the preexisting processing pipeline of the antenna subsystem.