Test Bed for a Smart Millimetre Wave Radar Sensor

With the introduction of millimetre wave radar systems in various commercial applications, including collision avoidance, cruise control, autonomous navigation and imaging, it is now clear that a "one size fits all" approach to radar system development is not effective. This paper describes the implementation of a test bed millimetre wave system comprising a coherent 94GHz front end, a fast arbitrary waveform generator based modulator and a fast digitiser which, with their associated software, will allow for the development and evaluation of modulation and signal processing techniques which can be adapted to various radar based tracking and imaging requirements. This research is aimed primarily at the development of a single, intelligent, adaptive radar system that is capable of performing many of the short and medium range sensing roles required by the airborne and ground based autonomous systems under development at the ACFR.