Architectures and Algorithms for the Signal Processing of Advanced MIMO Radar Systems

This thesis focuses on the research, development and implementation of novel concepts, architectures, demonstrator systems and algorithms for the signal processing of advanced Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) radar systems. The key concept is to address compact system, which have high resolutions and are able to perform a fast radar signal processing, three-dimensional (3D), and four-dimensional (4D) beamforming for radar image generation and target estimation. The idea is to obtain a complete sensing of range, Azimuth and elevation (additionally Doppler as the fourth dimension) from the targets in the radar captures. The radar technology investigated, aims at addressing sev- eral civil and military applications, such as surveillance and detection of targets, both air and ground based, and situational awareness, both in cars and in flying platforms, from helicopters, to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and air-taxis. Several major topics have been targeted. The development of complete systems and innovative FPGA, ARM and software based digital architectures for 3D imaging MIMO radars, which operate in both Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) and Frequency Divi- sion Multiplexing (FDM) modes, with Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals, respectively. The de- velopment of real-time radar signal processing, beamforming and Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA) algorithms for target detection, with particular focus on FFT based, hardware implementable techniques. The study and implementation of advanced system concepts, parametrisation and simulation of next generation real-time digital radars (e.g. OFDM based). The design and development of novel constant envelope orthogonal waveforms for real-time 3D OFDM MIMO radar systems. The MIMO architectures presented in this thesis are a collection of system concepts, de- sign and simulations, as well as complete radar demonstrators systems, with indoor and outdoor measurements. Several of the results shown, come in the form of radar images which have been captured in field-test, in different scenarios, which aid in showing the proper functionality of the systems. The research activities for this thesis, have been carried out on the premises of Air- bus, based in Munich (Germany), as part of a Ph.D. candidate joint program between Airbus and the Polytechnic Department of Engineering and Architecture (Dipartimento Politecnico di Ingegneria e Architettura), of the University of Udine, based in Udine (Italy).Questa tesi si concentra sulla ricerca, lo sviluppo e l\u2019implementazione di nuovi concetti, architetture, sistemi dimostrativi e algoritmi per l\u2019elaborazione dei segnali in sistemi radar avanzati, basati su tecnologia Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO). Il con- cetto chiave `e quello di ottenere sistemi compatti, dalle elevate risoluzioni e in grado di eseguire un\u2019elaborazione del segnale radar veloce, un beam-forming tri-dimensionale (3D) e quadri-dimensionale (4D) per la generazione di immagini radar e la stima delle informazioni dei bersagli, detti target. L\u2019idea `e di ottenere una stima completa, che includa la distanza, l\u2019Azimuth e l\u2019elevazione (addizionalmente Doppler come quarta di- mensione) dai target nelle acquisizioni radar. La tecnologia radar indagata ha lo scopo di affrontare diverse applicazioni civili e militari, come la sorveglianza e la rilevazione di targets, sia a livello aereo che a terra, e la consapevolezza situazionale, sia nelle auto che nelle piattaforme di volo, dagli elicotteri, ai Unmanned Aerial Vehicels (UAV) e taxi volanti (air-taxis). Le tematiche affrontante sono molte. Lo sviluppo di sistemi completi e di architetture digitali innovative, basate su tecnologia FPGA, ARM e software, per radar 3D MIMO, che operano in modalit`a Multiplexing Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) e Multiplexing Frequency Diversion (FDM), con segnali di tipo FMCW (Frequency Modulated Contin- uous Wave) e Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), rispettivamente. Lo sviluppo di tecniche di elaborazione del segnale radar in tempo reale, algoritmi di beam-forming e di stima della direzione di arrivo, Direction-Of-Arrival (DOA), dei seg- nali radar, per il rilevamento dei target, con particolare attenzione a processi basati su trasformate di Fourier (FFT). Lo studio e l\u2019implementazione di concetti di sistema avan- zati, parametrizzazione e simulazione di radar digitali di prossima generazione, capaci di operare in tempo reale (ad esempio basati su architetture OFDM). Progettazione e sviluppo di nuove forme d\u2019onda ortogonali ad inviluppo costante per sistemi radar 3D di tipo OFDM MIMO, operanti in tempo reale. Le attivit`a di ricerca di questa tesi sono state svolte presso la compagnia Airbus, con sede a Monaco di Baviera (Germania), nell\u2019ambito di un programma di dottorato, svoltosi in maniera congiunta tra Airbus ed il Dipartimento Politecnico di Ingegneria e Architettura dell\u2019Universit`a di Udine, con sede a Udine

Applicability and Advantages of Implementation of MIMO Techniques in Radar Systems

High-accuracy object detection using radio frequency signal has become popular field for research since last couple of years. Huge amount of research work are being done in this field now a days. Although radar systems were invented for the purpose of military, they are also used for civil service at present. MIMO communication systems becomes popular in recent years because of higher capacity, increased coverage and better voice and data quality in telecommunication systems. The overwhelming popularity of MIMO systems draws radar researchers’ attention to study the probability of implementing MIMO techniques in radar systems. This trend has been followed in this thesis. The applicability of MIMO in radar systems has been examined along with small simulations outcomes, which ends with analysis of the result and further research probability in this field. Any type of diversity is required for MIMO radar. Some of the probable diversity techniques are discussed with a signal model along with their advantages and disadvantages. This thesis starts with a brief discussion about radar principle and different types of radar systems, followed by detailed discussion on MIMO technology and their implementation on radar systems. Angular diversity i.e. beamforming is considered, in the simulation part of the thesis, to implement MIMO. Ideal propagation environment is assumed in the simulations in order to keep the focus on the beamforming mechanism itself. Approximately 10 dB signal-to-noise ratio gain is obtained in the simulations using reasonably low number of antennas. The thesis ends up with short discussion on the advantages of MIMO application in radar along with future research possibilities in this arena

Noncircular Waveforms Exploitation for Radar Signal Processing : Survey and Study for Agile Radar Waveform

International audienceWith new generation of Active Digital Radar Antenna, there is a renewal of waveform generation and processing approaches, and new strategies can be explored to optimize waveform design and waveform analysis and to benefit of all potential waveform diversity. Among these strategies, building and exploitation of the Noncircularity of waveforms is a promising issue. Up to the middle of the nineties, most of the signals encountered in practice are assumed to be second order (SO) circular (or proper), with a zero second correlation function. However, in numerous operational contexts such as in radio communications, the observed signals are either SO noncircular (or improper) or jointly SO noncircular with a particular signal to estimate, to detect or to demodulate, with some information contained in the second correlation function of the signals. Exploitation of this information in the processing of SO noncircular signals may generate dramatic gain in performance with respect to conventional processing and opens new perspective in signal processing. The purpose of this paper is to present a short overview of the interest of taking into account the potential SO noncircularity of the signals in signal processing and to describe the potential interest of SO noncircular waveforms for radar applications

Noncircularity exploitation in signal processing overview and application to radar

International audienceWith new generation of Active Digital Radar Antenna, there is a renewal of waveform generation and processing approaches, and new strategies can be explored to optimize waveform design and waveform analysis and to benefit of all potential waveform diversity. Among these strategies, building and exploitation of the Noncircularity of waveforms is a promising issue. Up to the middle of the nineties, most of the signals encountered in practice are assumed to be second order (SO) circular (or proper), with a zero second correlation function. However, in numerous operational contexts such as in radio communications, the observed signals are either SO noncircular (or improper) or jointly SO noncircular with a particular signal to estimate, to detect or to demodulate, with some information contained in the second correlation function of the signals. Exploitation of this information in the processing of SO noncircular signals may generate dramatic gain in performance with respect to conventional processing and opens new perspective in signal processing. The purpose of this paper is to present a short overview of the interest of taking into account the potential SO noncircularity of the signals in signal processing and to describe the potential interest of SO noncircular waveforms for radar applications

Radar Signal Processing for Interference Mitigation

It is necessary for radars to suppress interferences to near the noise level to achieve the best performance in target detection and measurements. In this dissertation work, innovative signal processing approaches are proposed to effectively mitigate two of the most common types of interferences: jammers and clutter. Two types of radar systems are considered for developing new signal processing algorithms: phased-array radar and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar. For phased-array radar, an innovative target-clutter feature-based recognition approach termed as Beam-Doppler Image Feature Recognition (BDIFR) is proposed to detect moving targets in inhomogeneous clutter. Moreover, a new ground moving target detection algorithm is proposed for airborne radar. The essence of this algorithm is to compensate for the ground clutter Doppler shift caused by the moving platform and then to cancel the Doppler-compensated clutter using MTI filters that are commonly used in ground-based radar systems. Without the need of clutter estimation, the new algorithms outperform the conventional Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) algorithm in ground moving target detection in inhomogeneous clutter. For MIMO radar, a time-efficient reduced-dimensional clutter suppression algorithm termed as Reduced-dimension Space-time Adaptive Processing (RSTAP) is proposed to minimize the number of the training samples required for clutter estimation. To deal with highly heterogeneous clutter more effectively, we also proposed a robust deterministic STAP algorithm operating on snapshot-to-snapshot basis. For cancelling jammers in the radar mainlobe direction, an innovative jamming elimination approach is proposed based on coherent MIMO radar adaptive beamforming. When combined with mutual information (MI) based cognitive radar transmit waveform design, this new approach can be used to enable spectrum sharing effectively between radar and wireless communication systems. The proposed interference mitigation approaches are validated by carrying out simulations for typical radar operation scenarios. The advantages of the proposed interference mitigation methods over the existing signal processing techniques are demonstrated both analytically and empirically

Chaotic Phase-Coded Waveforms with Space-Time Complementary Coding for MIMO Radar Applications

A framework for designing orthogonal chaotic phase-coded waveforms with space-time complementary coding (STCC) is proposed for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar applications. The phase-coded waveform set to be transmitted is generated with an arbitrary family size and an arbitrary code length by using chaotic sequences. Due to the properties of chaos, this chaotic waveform set has many advantages in performance, such as anti-interference and low probability of intercept. However, it cannot be directly exploited due to the high range sidelobes, mutual interferences, and Doppler intolerance. In order to widely implement it in practice, we optimize the chaotic phase-coded waveform set from two aspects. Firstly, the autocorrelation property of the waveform is improved by transmitting complementary chaotic phase-coded waveforms, and an adaptive clonal selection algorithm is utilized to optimize a pair of complementary chaotic phase-coded pulses. Secondly, the crosscorrelation among different waveforms is eliminated by implementing space-time coding into the complementary pulses. Moreover, to enhance the detection ability for moving targets in MIMO radars, a method of weighting different pulses by a null space vector is utilized at the receiver to compensate the interpulse Doppler phase shift and accumulate different pulses coherently. Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of our proposed method

Ultra-Wideband Secure Communications and Direct RF Sampling Transceivers

Larger wireless device bandwidth results in new capabilities in terms of higher data rates and security. The 5G evolution is focus on exploiting larger bandwidths for higher though-puts. Interference and co-existence issues can also be addressed by the larger bandwidth in the 5G and 6G evolution. This dissertation introduces of a novel Ultra-wideband (UWB) Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technique to exploit the largest bandwidth available in the upcoming wireless connectivity scenarios. The dissertation addresses interference immunity, secure communication at the physical layer and longer distance communication due to increased receiver sensitivity. The dissertation presents the design, workflow, simulations, hardware prototypes and experimental measurements to demonstrate the benefits of wideband Code-Division-Multiple-Access. Specifically, a description of each of the hardware and software stages is presented along with simulations of different scenarios using a test-bench and open-field measurements. The measurements provided experimental validation carried out to demonstrate the interference mitigation capabilities. In addition, Direct RF sampling techniques are employed to handle the larger bandwidth and avoid analog components. Additionally, a transmit and receive chain is designed and implemented at 28 GHz to provide a proof-of-concept for future 5G applications. The proposed wideband transceiver is also used to demonstrate higher accuracy direction finding, as much as 10 times improvement

Design and Optimization of Photonics-Based Beamforming Networks for Ultra-Wide mmWave-Band Antenna Arrays

In this chapter, we review the worldwide progress referred to designing optical beamforming networks intended to the next-generation ultra-wideband millimeter-wave phased array antennas for incoming fifth-generation wireless systems, which in recent years is under the close attention of worldwide communication community. Following the tendency, we study in detail the design concepts below true-time-delay photonics beamforming networks based on switchable or continuously tunable control. Guided by them, we highlight our NI AWRDE CAD-based simulation experiments in the frequency range of 57–76 GHz on design of two 16-channel photonics beamforming networks using true-time-delay approach. In the first scheme of the known configuration, each channel includes laser, optical modulator, and 5-bit binary switchable chain of optical delay lines. The second scheme has an optimized configuration based on only 3-bit binary switchable chain of optical delay lines in each channel, all of which are driven by four lasers with wavelength division multiplexing and a common optical modulator. In the result, the novel structural and cost-efficient configuration of microwave-photonics beamforming network combining wavelength division multiplexing and true-time-delay techniques is proposed and investigated