Applications of radar measurement technology using 24 GHz, 61 GHz, 80 GHz and 122 GHz FMCW radar sensors

Abstract This paper presents a review of radar applications in high-accuracy distance measurement of a target. The radars included in this review are frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar sensors operating in four different millimeter-wave frequency bands, namely 24 GHz, 61 GHz, 80 GHz and 122 GHz. The radar sensors are used to measure the distance of standard and complex targets in a short range of a few meters, thus indicating that the choice of target and the medium used for radar signal propagation also play a key role in determining the distance measurement accuracy of an FMCW radar. The standard target is a trihedral corner reflector in a laboratory-based free space measurement setup and the complex targets include a piston in an oil-filled hydraulic cylinder and a planar positioning stage used in micromachining. In each of these measurement scenarios, a distance measurement accuracy in micrometer range is achieved due to the use of a sophisticated signal processing algorithm that is based on a combined frequency and phase estimation method. The paper is concluded with a technical comparison of the accuracy achieved by the FMCW radars reviewed in this article with other related works.