SETHI : Digital radar system for signal generation and acquisition

SETHI is an airborne SAR system developed by ONERA, and integrating various sensors. The microwave ones cover from VHF-UHF to X or Ku Band, full polarimetric and very high resolution for high quality and advanced applications like interferometry and tomography applications. ONERA invest a lot in the entire SETHI platform, and particularly in the new digital system used since 2017, called Système d'Acquisition et de Mesures Expérimentales (SAMEVA). This new system gives us a lot of new perspectives. It is based on a modular PXI platform (PCI eXtension for Instrumentation) which gives us flexibility, modularity, quality and reliability. We also have some real-time streaming capabilities, GPS timestamping and the driving capacity of the entire analogic radar system. This paper presents mainly the digitizers and the new arbitrary waveform generation based on a VST (Vector Signal Transceiver).