The Theory and Design of Chirp Radars

A new radar technique has been developed that provides a solution for the conflicting requirements of simultaneous long-range and high-resolution performance in radar systems. This technique, called Chirp at Bell Telephone Laboratories, recognizes that resolution depends on the transmitted pulse bandwidth. A long high-duty-factor transmitted pulse, with suitable modulation (linear frequency modulation in the case of Chirp), which covers a frequency interval many times the inherent bandwidth of the envelope, is employed. The receiver is designed to make optimum use of the additional signal bandwidth. This paper contains many of the important analytical methods required for the design of a Chirp radar system. The details of two signal generation methods are considered and the resulting signal waveforms and power spectra are calculated. The required receiver characteristics are derived and the receiver output waveforms are presented. The time-bandwidth product is introduced and related to the effective increase in the performance of Chirp systems. The concept of a matched filler is presented and used as a reference standard in receiver design. The effect of amplitude and phase distortion is analyzed by the method of paired echoes. One consequence of the signal design is the presence of time side lobes on the receiver output pulse analogous to the spatial side lobes in antenna theory. A method to reduce the time side lobes by weighting the pulse energy spectrum is explained in terms of paired echoes. The weighting process is described, and calculated pulse envelopes, weighting network characteristics and dele-???