Ail Systems, Inc.

Peter J Burke

Joseph S Levy

William R Bang

A continuous wave (CW) integrator is employed within a compressive receiver to improve the sensitivity of the compressive receiver to CW signals. The CW integrator circuit partitions the bandwidth of the compressive receiver into a series of contiguous bins and integrates any signals residing within these bins over many sweeps of the compressive receiver bandwidth. By sampling and integrating CW signals present in the compressive receiver bandwidth, the CW integrator circuit improves the sensitivity of the compressive receiver by a factor approximately equal to 10 log .sqroot.N, where N is the number of integrations performed.

Apparatus for enhancing sensitivity in compressive receivers and method

An ultra-linear chirp generator includes a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) having a tuning characteristic which is naturally nonlinear, a linear ramp generator which generates a linearly ramping output signal having a linear slope characteristic with respect to time, a polynomial correction waveform generator which generates a polynomial correction signal, and a summer which is responsive to and sums the linearly ramping output signal and the polynomial correction signal. The summer generates a VCO tuning signal for tuning the VCO. The tuning signal corresponds to the linearly ramping output signal predistorted with a nonlinearity opposite to the natural nonlinearity of the VCO tuning characteristic. The linear chirp generator also includes a phase locked loop which is responsive to the output signal of the VCO and which has a reference frequency which is related to the repetition rate of the output signal of the VCO.

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Commack, NY, United States of America

Peter J Burke