VCO based chirp generation for broad bandwidth compressive receiver applications (in EW)

An advance in state-of-the-art broadband chirp generation for compressive receiver applications is discussed. Linear chirp of 1-GHz bandwidth and 1- mu s duration was generated with an ultralinear, millimeter-wave, Gunn VCO and sawtooth waveform driver. The chirp generation circuit was developed for use as a swept local oscillator (SLO) for a 500-MHz instantaneous bandwidth compressive receiver. Compressive receiver performance with this SLO approach demonstrates a greater than 10-dB improvement in receiver noise floor compared to that obtained with a conventional impulse based SLO.<>