Real-Time Radar, Target, and Environment Simulator

In this work, a real-time radar target and environment simulator (RTSim) is presented. RTSim provides a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test system for radar signal processing units (RSPU). RTSim provides repeatable experiments for radar developers in digitally controlled but complex environments. Moreover, it reduces the development costs by limiting expensive field tests. RTSim consists of three main components; a control computer that provides the user interface and scenario generation software, embedded processors for environment calculations, and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for baseband radar signal generation. In hardware-in-the-loop operation scenario RTSim and RSPUs work in synchronization. RSPU sends the parameters of current pulse burst to RTSim and it generates baseband IQ signals using these parameters and user programmed environment parameters obtained from scenario generation software. RTSim can generate return signals for targets, jammers, clutter, and system noise. The generated baseband signals are sent to RSPU over fiberoptic lines.