Trade-off between sensitivity and dynamic range in designing digital radar receivers

For optimizing a radar system and the digital radar receiver in particular, the designer is always confronted with trade-offs between sensitivity and dynamic range. In the paper the impact of effective noise figure of the analog to digital converter (ADC) on receiver performance is discussed. Next different definitions of dynamic range are presented. An S-band IF sampling digital receiver for different scenarios is analyzed and compared theoretically. A scenario for studying the compromise between sensitivity and dynamic range is proposed and simulated using Agilent advanced design system (ADS) simulation software. Finally, simulation results are presented to demonstrate the validity of the theoretical analysis.