Digital Doppler Effect Generation with CORDIC Algorithm for Radar Target Simulations

With increasing radar activities in the automotive, industrial and private sector, there is a need to test radar sensors in their environment. A radar target simulator can help testing radar systems repeatably. In this paper, the authors present a concept of low-cost hardware for radar target simulation. The theoretical foundations are derived and analyzed, and a possibility to simulate the Doppler effect correctly by using a CORDIC algorithm in VHDL is shown by using a FPGA to do a rotation of the I/Q baseband signals.