Reconfigurable Digital multiple beam forming with planar phased array RADAR on FPGA

Abstract

Beam forming is a signal processing technique used in antenna arrays for directional signal transmission or reception. Phased array radar is very important in modern radar development, and multiple digital beams forming technology is the most significant technology in phased array radar. Digital multiple beam forming on each antenna element about large phased array radar is impossible in processor based digital processing units, because it needs simultaneous processing many A/D channels.In this project we resolve this problem by using a multi array based beam forming technique with multiplexed signal processing unit on FPGA. The conventional technique of completely duplicated hardware and also dynamic reconfiguration does not yield the real time parallel beam processing. The proposed technique employs multiplexed signal processing unit which is time shared for various beam formers. This technique provides simultaneous beams without any compromise on functionality. The scope of the work includes the VHDL modeling of 16 element phased array antenna system and RTL implementation of complex NCO, digital mixer, low pass filter, multiplexers, demultiplexers, ROM for coefficient storage and Multiplier unit. The VHDL simulation of all these blocks shall demonstrate the beam formation for multiple beams. Simulated antenna outputs are used to test the developed beam former. The design is functionally verified by simulating the code in ModelSim from Mentor Graphics. The FPGA synthesis is done using Xilinx ISE tool. The synthesis results of ISE are analyzed for timing and area. The hardware output i.e FPGA output shows on Chipscope pro analyzer.