WAVEFORM DIVERSITY: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE


Waveform diversity indicates the ability to adapt and diversify dynamically the waveform to the operating environment in order to achieve a performance gain over non-adaptive systems. This technique can allow one or more sensors to automatically change operating parameters such as frequency, pulse repetition time, transmit pattern, modulation, etc. The present lecture starts with an overview concerning the role of the waveform diversity in history, mathematics, and music from the epoch of Pythagoras, continuing with the studies of Galileo, Fourier, and Maxwell. Examples of waveform diversity in nature, such as the bath sonar signal, the sounds of whales, and the cosmic microwave background radiation are presented. A tutorial introduction to the concept of ambiguity function, its relevant properties, and its role as an instrument to quantify the quality of a waveform, follows. Precisely, after a short review of the most common radar signals and their ambiguity functions, the effects of a possible signal coding is thoroughly described. Amplitude, phase, and frequency codes are considered, even if a special attention is deserved to the class of frequency coded waveforms through a Costas sequence.


Director, Dr. Alfonso Farina
SELEX Sistemi Integrati
Integrated Systems Analysis Department
Rome, Italy