Characterization of saturation effects on digital beam forming radars

This paper studies the effect of saturation on Analog-to-Digital Converters (A/Ds) in Digital Beam Forming (DBF) radars. It proposes two models to evaluate saturation effects. The first is a simplified model for quick calculations and the second a more complete model. Results from both models are presented and compared. Conclusions based on these results show that saturation in DBF radars can cause serious degradation in performance.