UC San Diego

The Joint Tactical Radio System project is the Department of Defense's effort to create and organize a communication network that links a variety of radio platforms (e.g. handheld, naval, and aircraft). This goal can be achieved by developing a family of interoperable software defined radios with its members optimized for specific platforms. Realistic software defined radios utilize two systems to enable flexible and interoperable communications: software and hardware. The software system is responsible for converting transduced real information (e.g. text, voice, and video) into digitally modulated information and performing data impairment correction and synchronization. The hardware system, also known as a radio frequency front end, performs the physical conversion between relatively low-frequency digital data and high frequency carriers for practical and realizable communication system implementations. This thesis describes the design and implementation of a wideband high dynamic range frequency hopping hardware front-end for the Joint Tactical Radio System software defined radio. The front-end realizes a transceiver that utilizes radio frequencies from 200 MHz to 3.2 GHz and provides a 78 dB maximum dynamic range. The frequency hopping local oscillator is achieved by direct digital synthesis and successive frequency multiplications. Additionally, a low-noise amplifier and band-pass filter bank in support of the radio frequency front-end implementation have been developed and tested. The system features a high level of discrete integration and has been implemented entirely through the use of commercially available integrated circuits and surface- mount devices. The complete system was constructed using manufacturer evaluation kits and custom designed boards