Versatile 126–182 GHz UWB D-Band FMCW Radar for Industrial and Scientific Applications
Simon Kueppers, Timo Jaeschke, Nils Pohl, Jan Barowski
Abstract
In this letter, a D-band frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar for industrial and scientific applications is presented. It covers an ultrawide 56 GHz sweep bandwidth (126–182 GHz, 36.4%) and is based on a custom 1 TRX + 2 RX SiGe transceiver millimeter-wave (mmW) integrated circuit manufactured in Infineon’s B11HFC 130 nm BiCMOS process with an <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{\rm {T}}$</tex-math></inline-formula> of 250 GHz and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{\rm {max}}$</tex-math></inline-formula> of 370 GHz. An innovative versatile multichannel edge-launch waveguide frontend-module architecture allows covering applications requiring dual polarization sensing or azimuth and elevation angle-of-arrival estimation based on the same mmW circuit board. The FMCW sweeper is based on measurement equipment grade commercial fractional-N PLL synthesizers in an offset dual-loop configuration for highly linear wideband FMCW sweep generation with a phase noise of better than <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$-$</tex-math></inline-formula> 80 dBc/Hz ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{\rm {off}}>$</tex-math></inline-formula> 10 kHz) and superior performance even for ultrafast ramp slopes of more than 56 GHz/1 ms. Intermediate frequency signals of a single target measurement are presented to demonstrate the dynamic range capabilities of the FMCW radar. An SNR of 81 dB is achieved using a metal plate reflector target in free space. Due to the ultrawide bandwidth and the resulting calibrated range resolution of 2.7 mm ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$-$</tex-math></inline-formula> 3 dB width, Tukey window), target separation is even possible in dense multitarget environments. Additionally, synthetic aperture radar images are presented as an example application utilizing the high-range resolution capabilities.