Digital Techniques for Wideband Receivers

James Tsui - US Air Force Research Laboratory, retired

Chi-Hao Cheng- Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Miami University

Introduction

1.1 Wideband Systems

This book discusses digital signal processing schemes that are potentially applicable to
electronic warfare (EW) receivers. These receivers must have very wide instantaneous input
bandwidth (about 1 GHz) to fulfill their operational requirements. This means any signal
within the input bandwidth will be received all the time without tuning the receiver. In
contrast, a communication receiver has a relatively narrow bandwidth. For example,
television channels are allotted 6 MHz (although digital TV has become a reality in the
United States, the channel bandwidth of a digital TV channel is the same as an analog TV
channel), frequency modulated (FM) radio channels are allotted about 200 kHz, and
amplitude modulation (AM) stations are allotted only 10 kHz [1]. If one turns on 10
television sets simultaneously and each one is receiving a different channel, the
instantaneous band-width of such an arrangement is considered to be 60 MHz (ten 6-MHz
channels).
However, communication bandwidth is increasing, because the wider the bandwidth,
the more information per unit time can be transmitted from one point to another. Some
current wireless communication systems, such as the 4G-LTE system, might use up to 100
MHz of bandwidth to support high data transmission rate [2]. If this trend continues, the
working bandwidth of an EW receiver and a communication receiver might be very
comparable in the future. Further discussion with communication engineers reveals that
many of the hardware considerations and digital signal processing approaches primarily
designed for EW receivers are equally applicable to communication receivers. That is the
reason for selecting the name of this book. However, there are fundamental differences
between an EW receiver and a communication receiver. A communication receiver is
designed to recover signals from a cooperative transmitter. In contrast, an EW receiver is
used to intercept signals from noncooperative radars and determine signal characteristics,
thus using this information to determine the types of radars. The primary emphasis of this
book is still on EW receivers rather than communication receivers, and most of the examples
in this book are from EW receivers, although the reader might find that some of techniques
presented can also be used to design a communication receiver.

1.2 Digital Approach [3–6]

Many communication and control problems have been solved through digital
approaches. Today there is little doubt that many engineering problems (i.e., communication
and control) can be best solved through digital signal processing. Digital circuits have long
been used in EW receiver applications, such as digital controlling of receiver operation
modes. Traditional EW receivers use crystal video detectors to convert radio frequency (RF)
signals into video signals. Once the RF input signal is converted into video signals through
crystal detectors, thevideo signals are further processed digitally. However, the crystal video
detector destroys the carrier frequency and phase information in the signal. If the crystal
detector is replaced by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), all the information is
maintained. In past decades, significant progress has been made in the development of digital
wideband receiving systems.
The ADC is used to convert analog signals into digital data for further processing. In
order to convert signals in a wideband receiver, the ADC must operate at a very high
sampling rate. To digitize signals with fewer quantization errors, the ADC must also use a
large number of bits to represent each sample. It is difficult to achieve both goals in an ADC
at the same time, but advancements in ADC technology are moving at an astonishing pace. It
is even difficult to make a meaningful assessment of ADC technology because of its rapid
development. Figure 1.1 shows a survey on ADCs as of April 1993. This figure is based on
information obtained from Walden [3]. The ‘‘ DARPA goal’’ indicates that the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a program to build a 100-MHz 12-bit
ADC, while the ‘‘WL goal’’ indicates that the Wright Laboratory (WL), whose name is later
changed to Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), has a project to build a 20-GHz 4-bit
ADC. Currently (2014), some commercially available high-speed ADCs can operate above 2
GHz with a more than 10-bit sample size [4].
High-speed ADC outputs must be processed by high-speed digital circuits. Otherwise
the digitized data is lost and the system cannot operate in a real-time mode. Current
operating speeds of digital hardware do not yet match the speed of state-of-art ADCs, and
the speed of digital processors may never catch up with the speed of ADCs. Nevertheless, by
applying techniques such as parallel processing, the capability of a digital system such as a
field-programmable gate array (FPGA) has been demonstrated for high-speed digital signal
processing [5].

Because of improvements in ADCs and digital circuits, it is anticipated that ADCs will
replace crystal detectors in all RF receivers, thereby preserving RF and phase information.
Furthermore, the ADC might move toward the front end of the receiver; that is, moving from
the intermediate frequency (IF) toward the RF end. In the future, it might be possible to
design receivers with only RF amplifiers and bandpass filters between the antenna and the
ADC and the mixer is no longer needed [6].

1.3 Obstacles in EW Receiver Development

Technically, it appears that there are at least two research and development obstacles in
the field of EW receivers. First, scientists and engineers not directly working in the EW field
have very little knowledge of it and are not aware of its requirements. The communication
field is very much different from EW. An understanding of communication systems is often
required in an undergraduate electrical engineering curriculum, therefore most electrical
engineers have been exposed to basic concepts of communication systems. (It is interesting
to notice that the word ‘‘communication’’ is used both in liberal arts and engineering schools
with the same meaning but different emphases. As a result, this word has different
interpretations. In liberal arts it means improving one’s interpersonal communication skills,
while in engineering it means how to modulate and demodulate a signal for transmitting and
receiving.)
In contrast, EW systems are only taught at a very few military academies or in short
courses. Therefore it is difficult for an EW engineer to communicate with scientists and
engineers outside the EW field to solicit new ideas. To remedy this problem, Chapter 2 is
devoted to a discussion of EW, with an emphasis on intercept systems.
The other problem is, in EW receivers there is no universally accepted evaluation
standard. All kinds of performance values are used to describe EW receivers. Unfortunately,
many of these receivers cannot even be considered as EW receivers because they do not
provide the desired data format required by EW operations. This problem is addressed in
Chapter 18. Chapters 2 and 18 are the two chapters in this book that deal with both analog
and digital EW receivers.

1.4 Organization of the Book

Many different subjects are discussed in this book and we attempted to arrange these
subjects in a coherent way. The subjects are divided into the following groups. Chapters 2,
17, and 18 cover EW receivers. Chapter 2 provides a general discussion of EW with an
emphasis on EW receivers, as mentioned in the previous section. In an EW receiver, an
encoder is used to generate a pulse descriptor word (PDW) consisting of the estimates of
signal characteristics such as frequency, power, pulse width, etc., often considered as the
most difficult function of an EW receiver. In Chapter 17, an encoder algorithm based on
multiple fast Fourier transform (FFT) frame lengths is presented as a design example.
Chapter 18 presents some measurement methods for EW receivers to obtain the values
discussed in Chapter 2.
Fourier transform and related subjects are covered in Chapters 3 and 4. Because Fourier
transform is needed in discussing other subjects, this subject is discussed first in Chapter 3.
Some commonly used Fourier transform examples are included in Chapter 3 as a quick
reference. Readers familiar with Fourier transform may skip this chapter. Chapter 4 presents
several subjects that are closely related to Fourier transform.
Hardware used in wideband receivers is covered in Chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5
discusses ADCs, amplifiers, and their interface. While discussing ADCs, the major focus is
the effect of their performance on receiver performance rather than the ADC implementation
technology. Because the ADC is a nonlinear device, mathematical analysis is difficult and
limited. A large number of computer simulations are used to provide a rough estimate of its
performance. In Chapter 5, the design of a digital receiver’s RF front end consisting of an
amplifier chain and ADC is also considered. It involves a trade-off in terms of sensitivity and
dynamic range. Chapter 6 discusses frequency conversion. Both analog and digital
approaches are included. The imbalance occurring in down-converting a real-valued signal to
a complex-valued signal deteriorates the receiver performance. An imbalance compensation
technique is presented at the end of Chapter 6.
 Sensitivity, frequency measurement, and receiver designs are covered in Chapters 7
through 10. Chapter 7 presents several signal detection schemes. The approaches include
detection in both the time and frequency domains. Chapter 8 presents two simple schemes to
improve frequency measurement accuracy. These methods have the potential to make the
frequency resolution dependent on pulse width such that higher frequency resolution can be
obtained on longer pulses. This is a very desirable feature in EW receivers. Chapter 9
presents a simple monobit receiver design with inferior performance but the potential for
fabrication on a single chip. Chapter 10 presents an effective approach to channelize the
frequency. The concept of decimation and multirate will be introduced. Some potential
approaches for improving frequency measurement after channelization are discussed in
Chapter 10 as well. These methods might be adopted in an encoder design. Several advanced
EW receiver techniques are covered in Chapters 11 through 14. High-frequency resolution
measurement is covered in Chapter 11. Chapter 11 also presents some high-resolution
parametric spectrum estimation methods developed in last several decades. These methods
usually provide finer frequency resolution than the FFT approach, but they are
computationally intensive. An EW receiver is designed to detect radar signals; most of the
application examples covered in previous editions of this book considered continuous-wave
(CW) signals. In this edition, two exotic radar signals, biphase shift keying (BPSK) and
frequency modulated (FM) signals, are considered in Chapters 12 and 13, respectively, as
important updates in EW receiver technologies. The bandwidth of a digital receiver is
determined by the sampling rate of its ADC. To increase receiver bandwidth, the most
straightforward way is to increase the sampling rate of the ADC. However, this might not
always be a feasible solution. Chapter 14 presents a technology known as analog-to-
information (A-to-I), which allows a digital receiver to cover a broad bandwidth with a low
sampling rate.
Most receiver examples considered in this book use only one antenna, therefore they
cannot measure a signal’s angle of arrival (AOA), but the AOA is an important signal
characteristic. Chapter 15 discusses AOA measurements. Some practical problems and
suggested solutions are also included. An AOA system calibration method based on the
time-reversal concept is discussed in Chapter 16.

1.5 Specific Remarks

Many computer programs are included in this book to help readers understand the
design of a receiver. All these programs are written in MATLAB (MathWorks, Natick, MA,
USA). Most of the high-resolution schemes in Chapter 11 have a computer program
associated with them.
Many of the figures presented in this book were produced using MATLAB. The time
scale is often labeled as ‘‘time sample’’ since it represents samples of the time domain. The
corresponding frequency plot is labeled as ‘‘frequency bin’’ since it is the spectrum
calculated from the FFT operation on the time domain samples.
If one is not familiar with this technical area or does not start from the beginning of the
book, it may be difficult to recognize some of the acronyms. Acronyms and abbreviations
are useful for expressing technical terms. For convenience, all acronyms are spelled out the
first time they appear in a chapter, even if it is a very common one. In addition, a list of all
the acronyms is provided at the back of the book.