Growing horns: Applying the Rhino software defined radio system to radar

Rhino is a hardware and software tool flow designed for software defined radio applications. We show that Rhino can be used for rapid prototyping of radar hardware systems, with minimal adjustments to the core Rhino system, with the new tool set being called, Rhinoradar. The radar user is able to specify desired radar configurations (waveforms, repetition rates, sampling schemes, matched filtering) via simple GNURadio-like processing blocks. The radar user is thus largely screened from complex Hardware Description Language (HDL) coding. The Rhino hardware provides two FMC interfaces, giving access to a wide range of commercial A/D and D/A boards. It also supports the IEEE 1558 network timing standard, allowing multiple boards to be synchronised via an Ethernet Network. Dual 10 gigabit network interfaces allow for real time data streaming for recording or further signal processing.