A Novel Methodology for Spectrally Efficient FMCW Radar Systems

• Published in: IEEE sensors letters Vol. 6; no. 6; pp. 1 - 4
• Main Authors: Butt, Faran Awais, Ali, Saqib, Naqvi, Ijaz Haider, Ejaz, Saqib
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.06.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Autocorrelation; Bandwidth; Bandwidths; Barker codes; Chirp; Continuous radiation; frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW); Frequency modulation; frequency shift; Optimization; Radar; Radar equipment; Sensor applications; Spectral efficiency; Spectrum analysers; Time-frequency analysis
• ISSN: 2475-1472; 2475-1472
• DOI: 10.1109/LSENS.2022.3174661

In this letter, we present a novel scheme that compresses the transmit bandwidth of frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar signal by making use of Barker codes and frequency shifts. The proposed system achieves bandwidth compression where the frequency of the signal is modulated over time using one of the Barker code sequences. Therefore, the changes in the slope of the signal are controlled by Barker codes. To avoid ghost targets, small frequency steps are added at the point of discontinuities. The proposed scheme achieves proportionally superior bandwidth compression at a cost of slightly degraded range resolution. The results are validated by implementation of the scheme on hardware and measuring the bandwidth on a spectrum analyzer. Finally, we jointly optimize spectral efficiency and range resolution to determine the optimal length of the Barker sequence. The resulting flexible design is a huge boost to the applicability of existing FMCW radar systems.