This paper describes the results of an Internal Development Program (IDP) No. 97-1 conducted from August I -October 1, 1996 at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)."] The IDP program was implemented to establish theoretical relationships and verify the interaction between X-band radar waves and ultrasonic acoustics. Low cost, off-the-shelf (OTS) components were used for the verification in order to illustrate the cost savings potential of developing and utilizing these systems. The measured data were used to calibrate the developed models of the phenomenology and to support extrapolation for radar systems which can exploit these interactions. One such exploitation is for soldier identification friendor-foe (IFF) and radar taggant concepts. Ultrasonics attractively offer an inherent low probability of intercept (LPI) capability due to their relatively high atmospheric attenuation. The described IDP program provided the phenomenological data which are being used to extrapolate concept system performances based on technological limitations and battlefield conditions for low cost IFF and taggant configurations.

The linear step frequency pulse compression waveform suffers from a) range ambiguities due to periodicities in the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) and b) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) losses due to amplitude weighting used to suppress nominal range sidelobes. Mark Waibridge of DERA Malvern, U.K., has proposed a nonlinear step frequency waveform which is derived from sampling a Doiph Chebyshev weighting function. The waveform does not exhibit range ambiguities and achieves low near-in sidelobes without incurring the SNR loss associated with conventional sidelobe suppression techniques. This paper assesses an implementation of the non-linear step frequency waveform by quantifying range sidelobes, range resolution, and range-Doppler coupling. The waveform has application in ultra-high range resolution profile generation.

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