Power efficient RF pulse compression through switched resonators

Abstract

A simple, compact and efficient RF pulse compression technique based on a switched resonator concept has been introduced. It utilizes the charging/discharging characteristics of the circuit resonator and can be applied to any other microwave resonators. The approach compresses the duration of the pulse envelope without changing the phase characteristics of the RF carrier. The achievable power efficiency has proven to be sub-optimal which is 1dB lower than the lossless case. A test bed with a microstrip coupled line resonator and a Schottky diode has been fabricated and tested. The experiment demonstrates a 4 to 1 compression ratio. The proposed technique is promising for many RF signal processings such as RF multiplexing in a noise limited scenarios.