Numerical simulation of a novel multichannel acousto-optic processor for a wideband adaptive radar system

Adaptive signal processing is vital for mission-critical antenna applications such as wideband radar. To Improve the performance of an acousto-optic modulator-based adaptive radar signal processor, a multichannel processing schedule is proposed. The interference signal is channelized over a bank of surface acoustic wave bandpass filters, and further processing is accomplished independently for each filter in the bank. Computer simulation shows that the new approach can provide a cancellation ratio in excess of 50 dB over a 20 MHz bandwidth. The issues of selecting the proper number of channels and consideration of the influence arising from component irregularities are also discussed.