A 240 GHz ultra-wideband FMCW radar system with on-chip antennas for high resolution radar imaging

Abstract

Nowadays emerging industrial radar applications demand for high-resolution, high-precision and at the same time low-cost radar sensors. Recent advances in semiconductor technology allow highly integrated radar sensors at frequencies up to several hundred GHz in mass-production suitable and cost-effective SiGe bipolar technologies. In this contribution, a SiGe MMIC-based 240 GHz radar sensor with more than 60GHz bandwidth is presented. It consists of a MMIC chip including the high-frequency components and a digital control module with the PLL stabilisation, ramp generation, and data acquisition. The antenna is realized by on-chip patch antennas, which are focused by using an additional dielectric lens. The radar allows fast and highly linear frequency sweeps from 204 GHz to 265 GHz with an maximum output power of ≈ -1dBm EIRP (patch only). A phase noise of 1 kHz offset) is achieved over the complete tuning range. Additionally range profile, jitter and imaging measurements are presented to demonstrate the achieved system performance.