The transponder data recorder: first implementation and applications

The Transponder Data Recorder is an experimental 1090 MHz signal acquisition system designed by the Radar and Navigation group at Tor Vergata University to record the signals in the Secondary Surveillance Radar band, centered at 1090 MHz. The peculiarity of the receiver is that it is based on five receiving chains (4 linear chains with large dynamic range and one with a logarithmic receiver) connected to a wideband linear array antenna. The TDR was developed in order to analyze the channel traffic and to test the new signal processing algorithms, in the research frame on multilateration (MLAT) and Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS-B), with real signals