A stepped-frequency radar transmission and reception system based on RF direct sampling technology was designed to address the issues of slow switching speed of sub pulses and incoherent phase of transmission and reception signals in stepped-frequency radar. This system performs RF direct acquisition of C-band radar signals, and all signal processing processes were carried out in the digital domain. It also had high integration and low power consumption. It was generated stepped-frequency signals by fast frequency hopping, frequency sweep of 1.8 GHz bandwidth within 7 ms was gotten. The system operates in the frequency range of 200~2 000 MHz with a frequency step of 2 MHz. At the same time, the parameters of the stepped-frequency signal in this system can be changed according to detection requirements. The test results show that the stepped-frequency radar system can achieve one-dimensional ranging function.