Endwave Announces ALC Log Amplifiers For Radar, EW Applications

San Jose, CA -- Endwave Corporation has announced the release a new product line of ALC Log Amplifiers. ALC Microwave was acquired by Endwave on April 19, 2007. Endwave now offers ALC Log Amplifiers for use in early warning radar receiver, threat detection equipment, electronic countermeasures and missile guidance systems. In addition, Endwave plans to expand the product line further into the millimeter-wave range.

A logarithmic amplifier (or "log amplifier", for short) is a specialty amplifier subsystem that is primarily used as an amplitude detector of input signal strength on the front-end of pulsed radar and other wideband electronic warfare systems. As a log amplifier provides an output voltage proportional to the logarithm of its input voltage (which is mathematically equivalent to the input power in dBm), the amplitude information is converted to more usable format than other linear detection schemes. In pulse radars, log amplifiers allow the system to process signals with narrow pulse widths and large amplitude variations by effectively compressing a large input dynamic range into smaller, more manageable blocks.

There are four types of ALC Log Amplifiers: the basic log amplifier (LA); the detector log video amplifier (DLVA), the successive detector log video amplifier (SDLVA or SDLA) and the extended range detector log video amplifier (ERDLVA).

SOURCE: Endwave Corporation