Millimeter-wave integrated radar systems and techniques

Recent advances in semiconductor fabrication are providing the opportunity to build very small and cost-effective single chip integrated radar systems operating at millimeter-wave frequencies and beyond. These tiny radar systems will enable a wide range of new applications such as automotive radar, safety helmet radar, robot guidance radar, UAV collision avoidance and mapping radar, bicycle safety radar and many other possibilities. Considerable progress has been made in designing and building such systems, however many challenges remain related to limitations imposed by RF IC technology such as CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductors) including modest dynamic range and modest noise figure for low noise amplifies, oscillator phase noise, limited transmit power, etc... There is also likely to be a significant interference challenge arising from large numbers of small radars operating in close spatial and spectral proximity in many of the envisioned applications. In this chapter we present an overview of some of the design challenges facing millimeter wave radar, and shed light on recent advances in system design and signal processing techniques, including adaptive waveform scheduling and interference mitigation. Advances in signal processing will allow multiple radars to operate in an uncoordinated manner with limited processing power using adaptive waveform scheduling, that leads to better interference mitigation and higher ranging performance. We present some properties of the millimeter-wave spectrum and investigate ray-tracing methods as an efficient, accurate and rapid testing platform for consumer radars applications, where we develop a ray-tracing propagation model for automotive radar operating in an urban environment. Also, we introduce novel tools from stochastic geometry to characterize the statistics of the interference resulting from many radars sharing the same spectrum in a particular location. Specifically, we study automotive radar applications and obtain interference statistics and the estimated detection performance. Finally, we briefly discuss certain fundamental limitations imposed on radar system capabilities, by COMS technology and by the information carrying capacity of electromagnetic waves.