Real-Time Radar Pulse Parameter Extraction on FPGA Platforms

In modern combat scenarios, the increasing number of radars operating in the same coverage area complicates spectrum monitoring tasks and imposes critical latency requirements on electronic warfare systems. This paper presents a real-time FPGA implementation of a pulse parameter extractor (PPE) for pulsed radar signals. The PPE provides information on each pulse, including the time of arrival, pulse width, carrier frequency and the phase difference between coherent receivers. The quality of these estimates is determined by the signal-to-noise ratio. The implementation of these algorithms on FPGA platforms are based on low-complexity pipelined processing schemes, with a latency between$1.25\ \mu s$and$1.65\ \mu s$and a maximum clock frequency of 275 MHz. This latency makes the approach suitable for operation in highly dense electromagnetic domains.