Case Study: Sandia National Laboratories achieves accelerated development of a high-performance digital radar receiver with MathWorks (MATLAB & Simulink)

Sandia Implements a High-Performance Radar Receiver Using MATLAB, Simulink, and Xilinx DSP Design Tools

Sandia National Laboratories needed to replace an analog IF receiver with a high-performance digital receiver for a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) system and to implement it on Xilinx Virtex-II FPGAs within strict time and budget constraints. To bridge the gap between DSP and FPGA design teams, Sandia adopted MathWorks tools—primarily MATLAB and Simulink—integrated with Xilinx DSP design software to model and verify the DSP subsystem before hardware implementation.

MathWorks’ MATLAB and Simulink were used alongside Xilinx System Generator and ISE to design, simulate, generate VHDL, and test DSP blocks (notably a parallel polyphase decimation FIR filter/demodulator) on two XC2V6000 Virtex-II FPGAs. The MathWorks-enabled flow accelerated development, provided high-speed, bit-true simulation and hardware testing, and delivered an estimated 20–25 gigaMACs per second performance, allowing Sandia to reduce iteration time and increase confidence in the final FPGA implementation.

Sandia National Laboratories

Dale Dubbert

Digital Radar Development Project Lead