Design and FPGA implementation of a FMCW radar baseband processor

This paper presents a base band processor design for frequency-modulation-continuous-waveform (FMCW) radar systems, which are capable of identifying the Doppler frequency from the spectrum distance calculation. Besides the FFT computing kernel and constant false alarm rate (CFAR) signal detection module, the system is further enhanced with functions like pulse identification, clutter cancellation and frequency resolution interpolation features. A control microprocessor is employed to coordinate the operations of basic function modules in different working phases. The design meet the system specs requiring a false alarm rate P_fa ≤ 10^-2, a detection rate P_d ≥ 0.95 and a distance resolution of 1m. The entire design is implemented in a Xilinx Virtex-IV FPGA. The implementation report shows the consumed hardware resources include 4232 logic slices, 18 embedded multiplier modules and 20 18kb BRAM modules. The maximum working frequency can reach 59 MHz.