Rapid prototype, morphable, CSWAP driven signal processing

Radar system processing hardware, analog and digital, has been limited in many cases to box or backplane form-factors. This can be an extremely limiting constraint when designing systems that require significant Cost, Size, Weight and Power (CSWaP) trades and incremental scalability. Another limiting factor in radar design is schedule; the time it takes to develop a prototype system. This paper describes system components with "out of the box" thinking developed under a Missile Defense Agency (MDA) contract with supervision by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to enable a scalable, morphable, building block hardware design that is programmable at the system level in Matlab/Simulink: Reconfigurable Advanced Rapid prototype Environment (RARE).