Digital beam forming for tactical airborne radars

Digital Beam Forming Array (DBFA) architectures promise significant performance advantages over contemporary antenna architectures. We attempt here to identify and address certain issues that are key to a practical DBFA system. We will discuss our “visionary” ultra wideband DBFA which is a concept to work towards in the future, as a new generation of devices becomes available. We will also focus on nearer term concepts for high performance Tactical Airborne Radar applications that require very high dynamic range signals to detect small targets in large clutter. We will show some receiver trades, dynamic range considerations, and processor sizing, as well the conceptual near term DBFA