A 77-GHz cooperative secondary radar system for local positioning applications

In this paper a cooperative radar system for local positioning applications operating at 77 GHz is presented. The proposed system is based on multiple frequency-modulated continuous-wave based stations which transmit their measured signals to a common processing unit. The required station synchronization accuracy is relaxed due to the centralized processing. Furthermore phase noise and sweep non-linearity effects can be mitigated in the signal processing. Measurements carried out using a realized prototype with two stations show a performance improvement of approx. 6 dB compared to conventional methods that are based on the exchange of preprocessed data.