Cobham Technical Services has leading-edge expertise in Ultra Wide Band (UWB) time domain radar systems, developed over many years of research and development. An innovative radar system solution is available, which can be used as the basis for either single channel or more sophisticated multi-channel radars. The radar comprises transmitter, receiver, control and signal processing. The on-board digital signal processor (DSP) and memory provide the required signal processing performance, including a significant amount of future proofing in a cost effective design.
The compact radar board integrates a high performance Blackfin, 16-bit fixed point DSP, with a Cobham-designed custom sampling circuit capable of pico-second resolution sampling periods. The tight integration of analogue and digital domains allows optimum performance of the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) with respect to the signal processing throughput and the quality of data available for processing.
The gain of the radar front end is digitally controlled and allows both flat gain, constant across the time range, and time-varying gain, variable across the time range, to be controlled. The gain adjustment is accurate to a tenth of a dB, within a 40dB range. This allows signals from differing depths to be subject to a custom gain profile.
The fixed point DSP simultaneously implements all system control functionality and signal processing tasks. The radar control also features automatic control loops to ensure that the circuit timing and temperature variations are minimised during GPR operation thus ensuring that the GPR remains in calibration.
This level of integration ensures that all processes within the radar board are tightly controlled from a single source. The inputs and outputs from the radar board are flexible in terms of data rates and protocol, and include three different communications ports. There is also provision for external triggering and analogue output. The following peripherals are available off board:
- SPORT - Synchronous serial ports which includes clock data and synchronisation signals
- SPI – Serial Peripheral Interconnect, providing chip select and duplex communication
- UART – Duplex asynchronous serial data
Very high speed serial radar data can be provided over a synchronous serial port, capable of data rates up to 50 Mbit/sec, whilst low rate data and system control and configuration may be performed using the UART or SPI peripheral. The radar forms the basis for MINEHOUND and FERRET.