Holographic Radar: Target Detection Enabled by Reconfigurable Holographic Surfaces

Radars are a widely used technology for target detection, commonly enabled by phased arrays. However, complex hardware circuits such as phase shifters in phased arrays lead to relatively high power and cost. To tackle this issue, the reconfigurable holographic surface (RHS), a novel metamaterial antenna with simple hardware and compact element spacing, has been proposed. In this letter, we propose the holographic radar enabled by RHSs for target detection to achieve high accuracy with low power and cost. Due to the amplitude-controlled structure of the RHS which generates beams by tuning radiation amplitudes of its elements, conventional phase-controlled beamforming schemes for phased array radars do not work anymore. Therefore, we design an RHS amplitude-controlled beamforming scheme to optimize the detection accuracy. Theoretical analysis shows the holographic radar consumes less power than phased array radars with the same detection accuracy and cost, which is also verified by simulation results.