Pulse to Pulse Stability of Solid State Transmitter Module for Radars Application

Pulse to pulse stability, an important characteristic of transmitter radar is characterized by the level of phase and amplitude variation between successive pulses of a burst of microwave signal. This variation of phase and amplitude determines directly detection limit of targets with very low RCS in presence of sub-clutter. Pulse to pulse instability can be related to external or intrinsic causes. This characteristic has to be quantified for all radar transmitter. For that, several methods can be used : Two temporal methods (standard deviation and rms method), and a spectral method. In order to characterize solid state module pulse to pulse stability, we have designed a specific test bench. This article describes the capabilities and gives a lot of significant results and performance of solid state module we have produced in our microwave laboratory of THOMSON-CSF AIRSYS and of this test bench.