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A Highly Accurate and Sensitive mmWave Displacement-Sensing Doppler Radar With a Quadrature-Less Edge-Driven Phase Demodulator | IEEE Journals & Magazine | IEEE Xplore

A Highly Accurate and Sensitive mmWave Displacement-Sensing Doppler Radar With a Quadrature-Less Edge-Driven Phase Demodulator


Abstract:

A 110-mW 39-GHz Doppler radar front end in 65-nm CMOS for displacement and vibration sensing is proposed. Conventional Doppler radar suffers from detection nulls, at whic...Show More

Abstract:

A 110-mW 39-GHz Doppler radar front end in 65-nm CMOS for displacement and vibration sensing is proposed. Conventional Doppler radar suffers from detection nulls, at which the receiver detection gain drops to zero. Quadrature demodulation for either carrier frequency or intermediate frequency (IF) is necessary to alleviate nulls but still induces nonlinear detection gain that needs to be compensated through digital signal processing (DSP). In this article, a Doppler radar topology is proposed to achieve ultrahigh displacement range accuracy and sensitivity and to eliminate detection nulls without using quadrature demodulation. An edge-driven phase demodulator (EDPD) processes the rectified square-wave intermediate signal and converts displacement/vibration to a true-dc/baseband signal with a constant gain. Coherent demodulation and signal generation through common-referenced subsampling phase-locked loops (SSPLLs) allow the radar to achieve 4- \mu \text{m} static range accuracy and 39-nm vibrational (at 10 kHz) range sensitivity in measurement.
Published in: IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits ( Volume: 58, Issue: 9, September 2023)
Page(s): 2451 - 2465
Date of Publication: 25 April 2023

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I. Introduction

Radar sensors with ultrahigh range resolution, accuracy, and sensitivity have great potential in various noncontact sensing applications [1], [2], [3], [4]. In this article, range accuracy is referred to the minimum static displacement that can be detected by radar, and range sensitivity is referred to the minimum vibrating displacement that can be detected by radar, while range resolution is referred to the minimum range difference that can be distinguished by radar when detecting multiple objects. Human vital signs such as respiration, heart, and epilepsy induce mm-level displacement at very low frequencies around 1 Hz [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. Material thickness and flatness measurement and detection in high-precision industrial manufacturing require -level accuracy. Detection of -level mechanical vibration of building structures in smart cities, machines, and instruments in labs, factories, and other specialty environments also call for high-sensitivity sensors [1], [7], [10], [11]. Utilizing dielectric lenses, beamforming, and phased-array techniques, millimeter-wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) radars can be designed as high-resolution imagers for security monitoring and human gesture detection [12], [13]. In general, radars with carrier signals at higher frequencies such as mmWave and THz band have better range accuracy and sensitivity, since the same displacement induces larger phase change on the shorter wavelengths.

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References

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