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Phase-Coded Waveforms

When to Use Phase-Coded Waveforms

Situations in which you might use a phase-coded waveform instead of another type of waveform include:

  • When a rectangular pulse cannot provide both of these characteristics:

    • Short enough pulse for good range resolution

    • Enough energy in the signal to detect the reflected echo at the receiver

  • When two or more radar systems are close to each other and you want to reduce interference among them.

  • When digital processing suggests using a waveform with a discrete set of phases. For example, a Barker-coded waveform is a bi-phase waveform.

Conversely, you might use another waveform instead of a phase-coded waveform in the following situations:

  • When you need to detect or track high-speed targets

    Phase-coded waveforms tend to perform poorly when signals have Doppler shifts.

  • When the hardware requirements for phase-coded waveforms are prohibitively expensive

How to Create Phase-Coded Waveforms

To create a phase-coded waveform, use phased.PhaseCodedWaveform. You can customize certain characteristics of the waveform, including:

  • Type of phase code

  • Number of chips

  • Chip width

  • Sample rate

  • Pulse repetition frequency (PRF)

  • Sequence index (Zadoff-Chu code only)

After you create a phased.PhaseCodedWaveform object, you can plot the waveform using the plot method of this class. You can also generate samples of the waveform using the step method.

For a full list of properties and methods, see the phased.PhaseCodedWaveform reference page.