Portable pulsed harmonic radar systems were built at UNB to track the movement of Colorado potato beetles. These systems use a high power marine magnetron to produce a microwave pulse and it is desired to upgrade the system using lower cost and low power electronics. This thesis is an investigation of an alternative strategy. A Stepped Frequency Continuous Wave Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum harmonic radar (SFCW-FHSS) was proposed to replace the conventional pulsed harmonic radar system. A mathematical model for the new system is presented and its performance was determined. MATLAB was used to investigate the model and a prototype was constructed and tested. From this, both performance and cost of the spread spectrum design was determined for comparison to the original system. It was found that this laboratory SFCW-FHSS harmonic radar prototype achieved the lower cost and lower power goal but it was only able to detect a signal from a tag that was 4 m away or less.
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