Airport Runway FOD Detection Based on LFMCW Radar Using Interpolated FFT and CLEAN

Airport runway foreign object debris (FOD) detection is an importance issue to civil aviation safety. For the millimeter-wave linear frequency modulated continuous wave (LFMCW) radar, the problem of FOD detection can be formulated as the frequency estimation of a multi-frequency sinusoidal signal, to which many methods have been presented. In this paper, two effective frequency estimation methods based on interpolated FFT, namely Rife-Jane´s and Quinn´s algorithms, combined with the CLEAN technique, are discussed in detail and applied to the field of airport runway FOD detection. The frequency estimation error and the effect of windowing of the two methods are analyzed and compared by simulation experiment.