High-Resolution Real-Time Impulse Radar Using Software-Defined Radio: A Step-by-Step Implementation with USRP X310

Abstract

Software-defined radio (SDR) has become an attractive platform for radar research due to its flexibility, compact size, and ability to reconfigure radar methods for different situations. However, achieving high-resolution time-domain radar with SDR remains challenging due to demanding requirements for data throughput, sampling rate, and hardware configuration. Frequency-modulated radar implementations face similar limitations, often suffering from slow data acquisition and increased system complexity including exact waveform linearity, phase coherence, frequency-stepping control, and computationally intensive signal processing. In this work, a high-resolution impulse radar is implemented on a USRP X310 equipped with a UBX-160 daughterboard. The system fully exploits the hardware’s wide instantaneous bandwidth, enabling high range resolution in real time. Detailed hardware requirements and software configurations are presented step-by-step to ensure reliable operation at high data rates. To maximize performance and flexibility, the radar system is implemented using the low-level USRP Hardware Driver C++ API rather than graphical programming frameworks. This enables improved memory handling, reduced processing overhead, and precise timing control. The resulting modular design permits adaptability for different radar modalities with minimal code modification. The proposed platform provides a practical and reproducible framework for developing wideband, real-time SDR-based radar systems.