11: FM cw Radar

9. FM cw Radar

! ! ! ! ! !

9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6

Principles" Radar equation" Equivalence to pulse compression" Moving targets" Practical considerations" Digital generation of wideband chirp signals "

FM cw Radar
! FM cw Radar is a low cost technique, often used in shorter range applications" ! Applications include, altimetry for aircraft landing, speed guns, laboratory test instruments, education, runway debris monitoring, avalanche detection, volcano eruption onset and many more" ! The technology is simple to fabricate but requires care to obtain high accuracy" ! The technique has the same conceptual basis as pulse compression and high resolution"

FM cw Radar
! (FMCW) is a radar system where a frequency modulated signal is mixed with an echo from a target to produce a beat signal." ! The time delay is a measure of the range." ! Digital Signal Processing is used for most detection processing. The beat signals are passed through an Analog to Digital converter and then digital processing is performed." ! FM-CW radars can be built with one antenna using either a circulator, or circular polarization. " ! Most modern systems use one transmitter antenna and multiple receiver antennas. " ! Because the transmitter is on continuously at effectively the same frequency as the receiver, special care must be exercised to avoid overloading the receiver stages"

The FM cw radar - principle

frequency"
two - way propagation delay ! = 2r c

transmitted" signal"

echo"

!f

!t
time"
frequency difference = 2r !f 2!f . = .r c !t c!t

See: Stove, A.G., Linear FMCW radar techniques , IEE Proc, Pt.F, Vol.139, No.5, pp343-350, October 1992."

The FM cw radar - principle

(a) f !f transmitted chirp !t " = 2r c

target echo (b) beat frequency !f !t t

"

f2 =

.(! t - ") = ! f - f1 ! f 2r . !t c t

f1 =

!f !t

." =

(c) P(f)

! t -"

1 !t - "

1 !t 1 " beat frequency

f1 spacing of spectral 1 lines = !t

f2

The FM cw radar- resolution

The range and range resolution are given, as before, by"

c! R= 2

and

!r =

c! t 2

Substituting for ! t we have "

c!t! f 2 !f

However, frequency resolution is determined by the time interval used, therefore"

!r =

c!t c = !f !t 2 !f

I.e. just as we had for pulse compression of a linear FM waveform but with the importance difference that we now only have to sample at the beat frequency and not the full bandwidth."

A schematic design for an FMCW radar

chirp generator frequency

circulator

time

spectrum analyser

! Frequency differences are obtained via a mixer and displayed on a spectrum analyzer. ! A circulator provides isolation between the transmitted and received signals. ! An alternative would be the use of two antennas.

The simplicity of this technique has meant that it has been used from the earliest days of radar
ionosphere

transmitter (Bournemouth)
2r ! d t = c

receiver (Oxford)
h = c 2t 2 + 2ctd 2

Appleton, E.V. and Barnett, M.A.F., On some direct evidence for downward atmospheric reflection of electric rays , Proc. Roy. Soc., Vol.109, pp261-641, December 1925. (experiments at end of 1924)

The FM cw Radar equation

The standard form of the radar equation is:" " 2 2 " PG !" Pr t = " 3 4 P 4 # r kT0 BF ( ) n " " " The bandwidth of the spectrum analysis processing will be matched to the sweep duration." " " The appropriate value of B is therefore the reciprocal of the sweep duration 1/!T rather than the sweep bandwidth !f. This gives a processing gain equal to the time-bandwidth product of the waveform, just as with conventional pulse compression.!

Equivalence of FM radar and pulse compression

power frequency

Pulse compression!
The chirp is matched ltered in the receiver using the complex conjugate of the transmitted signal to yie ld the point t ar get response"
time time

H(f)
transmitter power

H* (f)
receiver time

power

frequency

FMCW processing!
FM radar yields the same response but in the frequency domain"
power

time

time

H(f)
transmitter

receiver frequency frequency

time

Interrupted FM cw Radar (Fmicw)

frequency tx LO time

transmit chirp generator

LO chirp generator trigger spectrum analyser tracker processor

! Allows operation at longer ranges." ! A separate local oscillator with the same sweep rate is triggered at the right moment." ! The sweep and repetition rate are arranged so the the transmission and reception are interleaved thus improving isolation."

Moving targets
We know that echoes from a target with radial velocity v will have a Doppler shift"

fD

2vf 0 = c

The frequency of the echo sweep will therefore be offset, leading to a delay error"

!t = f D
which is a range error "

T B

!r =

Tf 0v c!t = 2 B

" This can be corrected using a triangular (rather than saw-tooth) frequency sweep. In fact it can be exploited so that both Doppler and range information can be extracted.!

Moving targets
frequency

2r ! = c

fD =

2vf 0 Doppler-shifted c echo

transmitted chirp

time beat frequency

f1 = f D + !

B T

f2 = f D " !

B T
time

f1 + f 2 = fD 2

f1 " f 2 B 2 Br = ! = 2 T cT

Doppler information can be extracted, unambiguously by taking the difference and sum of the two beat frequencies.

Digital generation of wideband chirp waveforms

(a)

(b)

Griffiths, H.D. and Bradford, W.J., Digital generation of high time-bandwidth product linear FM waveforms for radar altimeters; IEE Proc., Vol.139, Pt.F, No.2, pp160-169, April 1992.

Digital generation of wideband chirp waveforms

0 !/2

"
fm fm

fc fm

output

carrier

fc

frequency multiplication

DAC

DAC

SIN ROM

COS ROM

frequency accumulator clock

phase accumulator

start frequency

start phase

Linear FM Waveform and Point Target Response

The chirp bandwidth is 220 MHz, the chirp time length is 40 micro-seconds and the sweep repetition interval is 440 micro-seconds

Amplitude and Phase Errors

phase

chirp bandwidth, !f periodicity of phase error term

peak-to-peak phase error

frequency

Griffiths, H.D., Phase and amplitude errors in FM radars; Colloque International sur le Radar, Paris, pp103-106; Socit des Electriciens et des Electroniciens, 24-28 April 1989.

Phase and Amplitude Errors

Phase and amplitude errors will degrade radar performance. They generate paired echoes which manifest as side-lobes. Phase errors give rise to frequency modulation and amplitude errors to amplitude modulation. The phase error may be expressed as a Fourier series and the effect of each term analyzed separately. Each term produces pairs of echoes. Large errors can be tolerated if they vary only slowly with frequency. Correction is possible but the errors can only be suppressed not removed.

Sweep nonlinearities
10

The effect of amplitude and phase errors in a conventional pulse compression radar was evaluated by Klauder et al. in 1960, analyzing the distortion by means of a Fourier series and showing that each term resulted in paired echo range side-lobes." " This allows the maximum permissible phase or amplitude error to be evaluated for a given range side-lobe level." " The situation with an FM radar is different, though, and depends on target range - intuitively one can see that at zero range sweep nonlinearities will completely cancel."

LEVEL OF FIRST ECHO BELOW MAIN SIGNAL IN DECIBELS

20 30 40 50 60 0.1 0.2

0.6 1.0

10

20

40

PHASE DEVIATION, b , 1 IN DEGREES

10

LEVEL OF FIRST ECHO BELOW MAIN SIGNAL IN DECIBELS

20 30 40 50 60 0.01 0.02

0.06 0.1

0.2

0.6 1.0

AMPLITUDE DEVIATION,

a (1+a1) , IN DECIBELS o

dc response

! If an undistorted linear FM pulse is mixed with a delayed version of itself the beat frequency is a pure sinusoid." ! If this is phase detected against a coherent sinusoid of the same frequency a constant DC level will result." ! If there is any phase distortion present it won#t be a pure sinusoid and the output of the phase detector is proportional to the distortion." ! This can be displayed on an oscilloscope and corrected in real time."

Measurement of chirp phase errors

(a) delay, #$ spectrum analyser

chirp input

power splitter

beat fr equency %$f = # $$ %$t

(b) delay, #$

voltagecontrolled oscillator

beat frequency signal oscilloscope phase detector voltage ramp generator y

trigger

frequency divider reference oscillator

Synthetic Aperture Processing with FM Radar

! Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is able to produce imagery with " ! high resolution in two dimensions." ! Imagery in this form has many applications" ! The FM technique lends itself well to use in this way via extraction of both range and Doppler information." ! The radar is moved to synthesize a large aperture." ! The beat frequency is digitized and Fourier transformed to provide range information as a series of range bins." ! For each range bin Fourier transformation over a sequence of sweep cycles yields a Doppler signature for a particular Azimuth target position. I.e. the cross-range information."

Synthetic Aperture Processing with FM Radar

x

radar r

target
%r

r0
1/ 2

r(x) = (r0 + % r) + x = (r0 + % r) 1 +

$ $

1/ 2 2

(r0 + % r)

1 x + .... = (r0 + % r) 1 + 2 2 (r0 + % r)

f or x << (r0 + % r)

x - (r0 + % r) + 2r0

f or ! r << r0

"

Synthetic aperture processing with FM radar

It should not be surprising that synthetic aperture processing also works with FM radars The frequency of the beat signal is proportional to target range, but the sequence is modulated by a quadratic variation of phase (= linear variation of Doppler frequency) The processing is therefore carried out in two stages: firstly an FFT to extract the range information for each echo, then aperture synthesis on the sequence of echoes The example opposite shows the sequence of echoes from a point target for unfocused synthetic aperture
m=-N m = -1 m = 0 m = 1 m=N

fD
+ r0! 2 - r0! 2

A mm-wave FMCW SAR example

frequency 94 GHz VCO 3 GHz bandwidth DIGITAL 10 dBm 4 dBm non-linearity compensation voltage mixer 8 dB conversion loss 2 MHz, 1st order stop time sawtooth generator 20 kHz, 3rd order low noise amplifier, gain ! 60 dB transistor stage + op-amp 400 kHz, 3rd order anti-aliasing sync 10 MHz CLK A/D board ANALOGUE 1 MHz sample rate, 12 bit resolution 6 dB coupler

Radar Design
transmitting antenna receiving antenna

time

start position sensors

A mm-wave FMCW SAR example

* W-band (94 GHz)" " * FMCW, 3.5 GHz " bandwidth" " * rail-mounted SAR" " * 1cm x 5cm resolution"

Radar parameters

Centre frequency Radar wavelength Sweep bandwidth Sweep duration Pulse Repetition Frequency Transmit power Antenna size Antenna beamwidth Antenna gain Resolution SNR at 3 m range

94 GHz 3.2 mm 3 GHz 1.6 or 0.4 ms 625 or 2500 Hz 10 mW 7 mm ! 5 mm 32 E- & H-plane 15 dBi "R: 5 cm, "x:1 cm 22.5 dB 1cmcmccm

A mm-wave FMCW SAR example

A mm-wave FMCW SAR example

A mm-wave FMCW SAR example

A mm-wave FMCW SAR example

A mm-wave FMCW SAR example

SAR image of internal waves set up in Coriolis wave tank at LEGI, Grenoble

Tarsier
Tarsier is a mm-wave FMCW radar designed and built by QinetiQ Malvern for the detection of debris on airport runways.

Beasley, P.D.L., Tarsier, a millimetre wave radar for airport runway debris detection , Proc. EuRAD Conference, 2004.

Tarsier

Centre frequency Sweep bandwidth Sweep duration Pulse Repetition Frequency Transmit power Antenna size Antenna beamwidth Antenna gain Resolution SNR at 3 m range

94 GHz 3.2 mm 3 GHz 1.6 or 0.4 ms 625 or 2500 Hz 10 mW 7 mm ! 5 mm 32 E- & H-plane 15 dBi "R: 5 cm, "x:1 cm 22.5 dB 1cmcmccm

Further reading
Grifths, H.D., Khosrowbeygi, A. and Bradford, W.J., $Method of measuring the phase errors introduced by frequency multiplier stages#; Electronics Letters, Vol.25, No.1, pp5960, January 1989." " Grifths, H.D., $Phase and amplitude errors in FM radars#; Colloque International sur le Radar, Paris, " pp103106; Socit des Electriciens et des Electroniciens, 2428 April 1989." " Grifths, H.D., $New ideas in FM radar#; Electronics and Communication Engineering Journal, Vol.2, No. 5, pp185194, October 1990." " Beasley, P.D.L., Stove, A.G., Reits, B.J. and %s, B-O., Solving the problem of a single-antenna frequency-modulated CW radar , Proc. RADAR'90 Conference, Washington; IEEE Publ., pp391 395, ** May 1990." " Grifths, H.D. and Bradford, W.J., $Digital generation of high time-bandwidth product linear FM waveforms for radar altimeters#; IEE Proc., Vol.139, Pt.F, No.2, pp160169, April 1992." " Stove, A.G., Linear FMCW radar techniques , IEE Proc, Pt.F., Vol.139, No.5, pp343-350, October 1992. " " Beasley, P.D.L., $Tarsier, a millimetre wave radar for airport runway debris detection , Proc. EuRAD Conference, 2004. "