A Harmonic Radar Simulator for Modulated Waveforms

Abstract

In this study a software simulator is developed to investigate the operation performance of a pulsed harmonic radar. The simulator is capable of modulating transmitted RF signal with polyphase P1, P2, P3 and P4 codes, LFM and FMCW codes. Transmitted power, gain of the transmit and receive antennas and detected harmonic number are all configurable in the simulator. Distance to the target and radar cross section(RCS) of the target can be modified and received signal level is calculated using nonlinear harmonic radar equation which is also implemented within the simulator. It is able to realize pulse integration, a method which is used to increase processing gain of the radar. Additionally, to observe the effect of clutter rejection property of the harmonic radar, clutter can be added to the received signal using different statistical clutter models. Target characteristic can be either imported from any circuit simulator or can be generated analytically by the simulator itself. Developed simulator can be used as a tool in designing harmonic radar systems before going into detailed implementation.