A Novel Range Detection Method for 60GHz LFMCW Radar

The linear frequency-modulated continuous-wave (LFMCW) millimeter-wave radar has been widely used in automotive industry applications. The motivation of this paper is to propose a segmented range detection (SRD) method on the foundation of plentiful mature research on the target detection of LFMCW radar. According to the SRD method, the detection range (about 150m in the scene of vehicular collision warning) is divided into several segments and triangular modulation waveform which consists of several different frequencies is designed. Compared with typical digital signal processing method, the SRD method can availably decrease the bandwidth of the IF signal, therefore the in-band noise will be significantly reduced and the signal to noise ratio (SNR) improved. Additionally, different range resolutions can be achieved and average range resolution improved. The SRD method is also validated through multiple outdoor experiments with the use of 60 GHz LFMCW millimeter-wave radar system designed by our research group. The efficiency of the SRD method is demonstrated in terms of ranging accuracy and range resolution after the analysis of experiment results.