Case Study: Architecture-Level Development of a Pulse-Doppler Radar System

Problem Statement System-level design of a pulse-doppler radar system requires top-down decompositions of goals into layers of requirements, followed by a bottom-up implementation of the system from theatre components. Design Goal I need a pulse-doppler radar system. Operations Concept The pulse-doppler radar system will detect small aircraft at long ranges, even when their echoes are buried in strong ground clutter (Stimson, 1998). Our long-term development objective is to create an interactive design environment where the specifications for system components are found online. Component specifications will basically say "...if you supply a required set of inputs, then the component will gurantee a minimum level of performance (output). Top-Down System-Level Development The flowdown of requirements to the system architecture might be as follows: Figure 1. Flowdown of Requirements to System Architecture for Pulse-Doppler Radar. Reuse of System Components. Radar design is driven by "radar range" equations and trade-off among terms (e.g., transmitter power vs. antenna gain).

Section 3-1: June, 2003.