Software Defined Radar basics | What is Software Defined Radar
This page defines Software Defined Radar basics.It mentions block diagram of Software Defined Radar and explains various modules of software defined radar. The benefits or advantages of software defined radar architecture are also mentioned.
Radar: The term RADAR stands for RAdio Detection And Ranging. It is mainly used to detect object's location and direction along with its velocity.
Software defined radar: The radar whose internal modules are software configurable is known as software defined radar. The same has been described below. It follows software defined radio architecture.
Software defined radar block diagram

The figure-1 depicts software defined radar block diagram. As shown it consists of following modules.
1. RF/Microwave section: It consists of signal conditioning modules,
up converters and down converters, Local oscillators and Active Phased Array Antenna.
• Signal conditioning modules: They are multiple channels which performs operation on
analog signal.
• Up converters: They are DUCs i.e. Digital Up Converters.
• Down converters: They are DDCs i.e. Digital Down Converters.
Refer DUC vs DDC for complete description on DUC and DDC modules.
• Local Oscillators: They are highly stable Local Oscillators.
They are used to provide very tight synchronization among DUCs, DDCs, DACs and ADCs.
• Active Phased Array Antenna: This antenna array takes care of
multiple radio signal transmission and reception.
2. IF/Baseband Section: It consists of high sample ADCs and DACs.
The ADCs/DACs support wide input signal bandwidth.
High sample rate ADCs/DACs can be used for direct sampling transmitter and
direct sampling receiver designs.
• ADCs: It performs analog to digital conversion. It processes
down converted received data. The data output of ADC is given to processor
for further processing.
• DACs: It performs digital to analog conversion.
It processes radar data to be transmitted and provides input to
up converters.
3. Radar processor and data storage modules.
• Radar processor: The complex signal processing algorithms are developed and ported on
processor used in software defined radar.
• data storage modules take care of providing storage of results as per user requirements.
Advantages of Software defined radar architecture
Following are the advantages of Software defined radar architecture.
➨The software configured modules allow engineers to
quickly prototype and test/validate advanced radar systems of choice
with common set of available hardware.
➨It benefits from large availability of
Software defined radio modules. Hence this will save great amount of
time and money due to ease in integration of ready modules.
➨It helps in analyzing radio signals with very wide signal bandwidth.
RADAR Tutorial RELATED LINKS
Refer following radar tutorial links which covers radar measurements, doppler radar, FMCW radar, radar bands, radar scope, weather radar, radar range and resolution, ground radar etc.
Radar Measurements
Doppler Radar
FMCW RADAR
RADAR BANDs
RADAR SCOPE
Weather Radar
Ground Penetrating Radar System
RADAR RANGE and RESOLUTION
Radar calculators
Following are useful radar calculators to calculate radar range, radar PRF, radar resolution etc.
Radar Range calculator
Radar PRF vs Range
Radar Range Resolution