Low Cost FMCW Radar Design and Implementation for Harbour Surveillance Applications

The prototype of a low power radar with a coverage range from some hundred meters to a few kilometres is presented in this paper. A Frequency Modulate Continuous Wave (FMCW) X-band solution has been chosen from the architectural point of view, and an hybrid realization has been adopted. In fact, one of the main target of the design was to demonstrate the feasibility of high sensitivity radar sensor implemented in a low cost technology. Some original solutions have been adopted to reach this target. The radar prototype is composed by a radio frequency front end, entirely realized by using commercial components, and by a DSP platform implemented by using open source software. The prototype has been realized and tested. The main interesting results are: (i) the low cost of the radio frequency front end; (ii) the high sensitivity of the sensor which resulted capable of monitoring the movements of object and peoples in a range of some hundred meters with a transmitted power as low as a few mW; (iii) a very low level of EM pollution; (iv) a coverage range of 1 mile with an output power of 2 W; (v) the detection of range and velocity for targets with a radar cross section larger than 1 m inside the coverage range. The main application will be as a node of a radar network for harbour surveillance.