An Efficient Digital Channelized Receiver for Low SNR and Wideband Chirp Signals Detection

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is essential for obtaining intelligence in modern information warfare. Wideband chirp signals with a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are widely used in SAR. Intercepting low-SNR wideband chirp signals is of great significance for anti-SAR reconnaissance. Digital channelization technology is an effective means to intercept wideband signals. The existing digital channelization methods have the following problems: the contradiction of reception blind zone and signal spectrum aliasing, high computational complexity, and low estimating accuracy for chirp signals with a low SNR. This paper proposes a non-critical sampling digital channelized receiver architecture to intercept chirp signals. The receiver architecture has no blind zone in channel division and no aliasing of signal spectrum in the channel, which can provide reliable instantaneous frequency measurements. An adaptive threshold generation algorithm is proposed to detect signals without prior information. In addition, an improved instantaneous frequency measurement (IFM) algorithm is proposed, improving low SNR chirp signals’ frequency estimation accuracy. Moreover, a simple channel arbitration logic is proposed to complete the cross-channel combination of wideband signals. Simulations show that the proposed receiver architecture is reliable and robust for low SNR and wideband chirp signal detection. When the input SNR is 0 dB, the absolute frequency root-mean-square error (RMSE) of bandwidth and the center frequency is 0.57 MHz and 1.05 MHz, respectively. This frequency accuracy is great for radio frequency (RF) wideband systems.