Patent ID: 8988278
Filing Date: 2015-03-24
Classification: G01S,H01Q

Abstract:
1. A radar system comprising: a transmitter; a receiver, including a plurality of receive channels, each receive channel including a receive antenna element, a phase shifter, and a switch configured to turn the receive channel on and off; a summing element receiving signals from the receive channels; a mixer receiving a sum signal from the summing element; and an antenna controller adjusting phase angles of phase shifters in the receive channels, and configured to actuate the switch so as to turn on and off a respective receive channel, wherein the antenna controller is further configured to operate the radar system in a phased array mode and digital beam forming mode, wherein in the phased array mode the antenna controller closes all switches at the same time and the phase shifters receive shift weightings, and wherein in the digital beam forming mode, the antenna controller sets all the phase shifters to a reference value, and the antenna controller sequentially turns each of the plurality of switches on and off so as to have only one of the plurality of receive channels on at any given time, wherein time-multiplexed signals from each receive channel turned on is collected by the summing element and processed so as to generate a digital beam after a predetermined number of receive channels is turned on and off.