Design and Implementation of 24 GHz Multichannel FMCW Surveillance Radar with a Software-Reconfigurable Baseband

Abstract

We designed and developed a 24 GHz surveillance FMCW (Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave) radar with a software-reconfigurable baseband. The developed radar system consists of transceiver, two selectable transmit antennas, eight parallel receive antennas, and a back-end module for data logging and to control the transceiver. The architecture of the developed radar system can support various waveforms, gain control of receive amplifiers, and allow the selection of two transmit antennas. To do this, we implemented the transceiver using a frequency synthesizer device and a two-step VGA (Variable Gain Amplifier) along with switch-controlled transmit antennas. To support high speed implementation features along with good flexibility, we developed a back-end module based on a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) with a parallel architecture for the real-time data logging of the beat signals received from a multichannel 24 GHz transceiver. To verify the feasibility of the developed radar system, signal processing algorithms were implemented on a host PC. All measurements were carried out in an anechoic chamber to extract a 3D range-Doppler-angle map and target detections. We expect that the developed software-reconfigurable radar system will be useful in various surveillance applications.