Investigation of Chirp Stepped Signal Performance for 60GHz Millimeter Wave Radar

The performance of the chirp stepped signal (CSS) is investigated in this paper. Based on the ambiguity function theory, a 60GHz radar system performance with CSS, such as, distance, speed and angle detection are firstly analyzed and then simulated and experimental verified. Finally, using our designed CSS, a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and improved range detection capability are obtained under the condition of low instantaneous bandwidth when compared with the FMCW signal. Our results show that the CSS has a good potential for 60GHz millimeter radar applications.

I. Introduction

The 60GHz radar works in the atmospheric absorption window and therefore has the excellent anti-interference ability. This makes it has a wide range of application prospects in short-range target detection and anti-jamming systems, and receives extensive attention from researchers. For example, [1] described a family of ultra-low power fundamental-frequency and second-harmonic 60GHz radar sensors. High-resolution range contour reconstruction method based on CSS is introduced in [2] . [3] and [4] used new frameworks and miniaturized signal processing circuits respectively to improve the performance of 60GHz radars. A target motion compensation method in the frequency domain is proposed in [5] . Most of these works are focused on FMCW radar and have made great contributions to expanding the application areas of the radar. However, as we all know, published research on CSS 60GHz radar is still very limited.