A software defined radar platform for mm-wave sensing applications

In this paper we present a newly developed software defined radar platform for mm-wave sensing applications. The main features of this platform are up to eight analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters with a sample rate of 500 MSPS and 14-bit resolution for conversion and modulation. A 77-GHz SiGe chip with an in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) modulator in the transmit path and an I/Q receive mixer is used for radar measurements. As a first outlook on the potential benefits, frequency-modulated continuous-wave and range/Doppler radar measurements are presented. In these measurements the frequency ramps are solely generated in baseband and upconverted using the I/Q modulator as single-sideband mixer. Ramp durations down to 1μs were experimentally verified at a bandwidth of 200 MHz.