FPGA architecture for real-time wideband waveform synthesis

Waveform generation plays a key role in RADAR, communications, and electronic warfare. As signal processing hardware and algorithms have become more sophisticated, waveform bandwidth and complexity have increased. We present an architecture for a versatile waveform generator that is suited to wideband systems and natively supports many popular modulation schemes. Real-time generation reduces memory requirements compared with systems that must pre-compute complicated modulations, and enables intra-pulse and inter-pulse waveform agility. The design is implemented and tested on a Xilinx Virtex 6 FPGA card with a 2.5 GSps digital to analog converter.