Abstract
An E-band antenna module and corresponding beam sharpening method is proposed to achieve high azimuth resolution for front-looking real aperture radar application. To achieve high angular resolution with a small antenna aperture size, a solution involving real beam and super-resolution is investigated. A monopulse antenna is developed to produce two coprime channels, which are essential for the subsequent beam sharpening in digital domain. A dual-aperture horn antenna and a monopulse comparator that make up the monopulse antenna are designed respectively, and the experimental prototypes are fabricated and tested. Experimental results show the antenna module can operate in the 75 to 80 GHz band, more than 20 dBi gain and 12° half power azimuth beamwidth can be maintained in the sum-patterns, and the null-depths are lower than -20 dB in the difference-patterns. Based on the measured sum and difference patterns, an azimuth super-resolution processing based on two-channel deconvolution is implemented. The simulation results show the sharpening ratio can achieve 12 dB with 0 dB signal-noise-ratio and truncated half power beamwidth. Theoretically, the azimuth super-resolution of 0.8° can be achieved with 20 mm aperture size. The corresponding achievements are valuable in the follow-up E-band civil front-looking imaging system.
Highlights
In the entire E-band frequency range (60 to 90 GHz), the 77 GHz frequency band has been released to civilian use in many countries [1]–[5]
The application of 77 GHz band is mainly driven by the advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) [6], [7]
The motivation of the work mentioned in this paper is to develop the antenna module of an E-band radar sensor that can realize 360◦ azimuth coverage with adequate range resolution and azimuth resolution, simultaneously
Summary
In the entire E-band frequency range (60 to 90 GHz), the 77 GHz frequency band has been released to civilian use in many countries [1]–[5]. Doppler beam sharpening (DBS) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) are widely used to improve the angular resolution by making use of relative motion between radar and targets, but both of the two system architectures are usually complex and costly. The motivation of the work mentioned in this paper is to develop the antenna module of an E-band radar sensor that can realize 360◦ azimuth coverage with adequate range resolution and azimuth resolution, simultaneously. The azimuth beamwidth is compressed by deconvolution without increase the aperture size of antenna VOLUME 9, 2021 radar is usually used for precise tracking and features high angle measurement accuracy, while its angular resolution is dominated by the beamwidth of sum beam, that is to say, if multiple targets exist in the main beam range, they cannot be distinguished simultaneously. The performance of beam sharpening is given and discussed in the last section and the effectiveness of the proposed beam sharpening antenna is verified
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