Analog circuitry is often expensive and limited in scope meaning that changes to the desired functions are slow and costly. The Software Defined Radar (SDRadar) concept call for quick system development and change bringing most of the radars functions from analog hardware based to software based. Withing that concept this paper investigates the direct Radio Frequency (RF) signal generation. To that end sample waveforms are numerically generated and modulated with an L-band carrier frequency in Matlab. The digital signal is then sent to an Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) for analog conversion. To evaluate the resulting signal it is conducted to a Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO) for digitization and then matched filtered. Taking advantage of the flexibility of the SDRadar concept another test is performed with the use of digital up and down conversion for comparison. Results show that both signal generation setups produce highly correlated signals with their numerically generated counterparts.
