Miniaturised stretch processed radar transceiver

Abstract

A miniaturisation of an architecture novel for an S-band radar testbed is reported. The fabricated radar is a low-cost, high-performance and printed circuit board (PCB)-based system. The system and its individual sub-stages along with the miniaturised radar prototype have been simulated using advanced design system and applied wave research. Printed filters replacing bulky microwave components and impedance matching techniques to minimise power losses in the amplifiers are reported. The measured results are compared with electromagnetic simulations. The reduction in the overall system package size is significant, without degrading performance. The insertion loss and signal reflections through different stages are reduced, which contributed significantly to the enhancement of the measurement. The implemented radar PCB prototype used stretch processing technique to achieve high dynamic range of 75 dB, experimentally measured over a wide signal bandwidth of 600 MHz. This achieves a range resolution of 0.25 m. The overall dynamic range of the new single-type-substrate system has been improved by 15 dB, while miniaturising the overall size to enable light weight portable packaging. The achieved performance is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the highest reported in literature for similar type of radar testbeds that can be used for advanced industrial and military applications.