The Development of a Digital Processing System for Accurate Range Determinations

Abstract

The development of an accurate close range (from 0.0 meters to 30.0 meters) radar system for Teleoperator Maneuvering Systems (TMS) is discussed. The system under investigation is a digital processor that converts incoming signals from the radar system into their related frequency spectra. Identification will be attempted by correlating spectral characteristics with accurate range determinataions. The system will utilize an analog to digital converter for sampling and converting the signal from the radar system into 16-bit digital words (two bytes) for RAM storage, data manipulations, and computations. To remove unwanted frequency components the data will be retrieved from RAM and digitally filtered using large scale integration (LSI) circuits. Filtering will be performed by a biquadratic routine within the chip which carries out the required filter algorithm. For conversion to a frequency spectrum the filtered data will be processed by a Fast Fourier Transform chip. Analysis and identification of spectral characteristics for accurate range determinations will be made by microcomputer computations.