Near-Range SFCW UWB Radar Based on Low-Cost Software Defined Radio

Software defined radio (SDR) is a very attractive tool for prototyping systems because of its flexibility and the cost. However, it has an issue to build a stepped frequency continuous wave (SFCW) radar, which is the phase inconsistency between streamings of baseband signals. The present paper illustrates the problem and proposes a solution by using the RF loopback function of RF transceiver. The way does not require any additional components and thus the cost can be kept low, which is one of the features of prototyping radar using SDR. The paper demonstrates the proposed method in cable through configuration. It shows that an ultra-wideband (UWB) radar pulse with the width less than 0.5 ns can be generated and received using the full carrier frequency bandwidth of Nuand bladeRF. The results indicate that low-cost SDR can be used to build and prototype UWB SFCW radar for near-range applications.