Case Study – X-Band Radar System Integration

Project:
 

Reverse engineer an incomplete X-band radar system used as demonstration technology, and rebuild with more functionality than originally planned.
 

Challenges:
 

• The customer had no functional source code, no documentation, and no available support from the people initially responsible for designing and building the system.
   
• The radar system had been designed and built in stages, by various disparate groups, with custom, undocumented modifications made to the system as it was developed.
   

Expertise Required:
 

• Computational electromagnetics
   
• Radar system analysis, design, testing, and measurement
   

Solution:

BerrieHill Research Division of ARA reverse engineered the hardware and software, determined how the components of the system interacted with each other, and rebuilt, from scratch, new field-programmable gate array (FPGA) firmware to bring the system to a level of functionality well beyond its original capabilities. ARA-BerrieHill documented every step of this process and incorporated the new software and firmware into a revision-controlled repository.

Following this initial effort, ARA-BerrieHill tested and calibrated the X-band radar system, successfully validating the system’s functionality.

Result:

ARA-BerrieHill worked with The Ohio State University to perform crucial research using the X-band radar system, demonstrating that it could be used for real-world measurements in applications.

Contact ARA-BerrieHill or call 937-435-1016 to learn more about its advanced research and development capabilities in the areas of antenna and radar system design, RF measurement and testing.