Wide-band range-Doppler processing for FMCW systems

A common task in signal processing for frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar systems is the estimation of range and relative velocity of objects. The often used range-Doppler processing is based on a 2D-fast Fourier transform (FFT) to estimate the power spectrum. Therefore, it is limited by the ambiguities in range- and velocity-estimation. Setups that extend the unambiguous regions by shorter ramps and faster sampling are often demanding due to hardware constraints. To overcome the velocity ambiguities and relax the hardware constraints, a more comprehensive wide-band range-Doppler algorithm is presented in this paper. Unlike the conventional 2D-FFT based range-Doppler processing, the presented principle allows the use of very broadband sweeps. Such sweeps allow the extension of the unambiguous region without requiring shorter ramps.