Proceedings of the 16th European Radar Conference

A Novel Approach for a MIMO FMCW Radar

System with Frequency Steered Antennas
for 3D Target Localization
Alexander Orth, Patrick Kwiatkowski, Nils Pohl
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany
{alexander.orth, patrick.kwiatkowski, nils.pohl}@rub.de

Abstract — In this paper, a new approach for a MIMO FMCW

radar system with direction of arrival estimation capabilities in
azimuth and elevation direction is presented. This is achieved
using an equally spaced linear virtual antenna array with
frequency steered transmit antennas and frequency selective
signal processing. The system and antenna concepts together with
the necessary signal processing are presented and then evaluated
based on a simulated scenario.
Keywords — MIMO radar, Millimeter wave radar, Leaky wave
antennas, Patch antennas, radar imaging.

I. I NTRODUCTION
MIMO radar systems enable the efficient localization
of targets with use of fewer antenna elements compared Fig. 1. RX and TX antenna arrangement of the novel MIMO FMCW radar
to conventional phased array radar systems. With a system.
two-dimensional arrangement of the TX and RX antenna
elements the three-dimensional position (R, φ, θ) of a target
relative to the radar system can be estimated by means frequency steered beam is used [7][8]. The system benefits
of digital beamforming [1][2]. Recently, a compact MIMO from the maximum possible resolution in azimuth and a high
FMCW radar system with 16 TX and 16 RX antennas forming resolution in elevation at cost of range resolution.
a rectangular virtual array with 256 virtual elements spaced In this paper, a short overview of the system (section II)
λ and the TX and RX antenna concepts (section III) are presented
2 has been presented [3]. The system yielded an angular
resolution of ∆φ3dB = 3.6◦ in azimuth and ∆θ3dB = 4.7◦ first. This is followed by the description of a frequency
in elevation [4]. selective signal processing algorithm that is necessary to
The angular resolution in azimuth and elevation is evaluate measurements of the system in section IV. Finally
determined by the number of virtual antenna elements per in section V the signal processing is applied to a simulated
dimension. For a MIMO radar system with a limited number of scenario consisting of several targets located at different
TX and RX channels the highest angular resolution is achieved three-dimensional positions.
when the virtual array is linear, which means that all antenna II. S YSTEM C ONCEPT
elements are positioned along one axis. However, with such an
The novel MIMO FMCW radar system operates in a time
antenna arrangement only the two-dimensional position (R, φ)
division multiplexing mode and covers a frequency range from
of a target can be estimated.
77 to 81 GHz. The system contains 6 TX and 8 RX antennas
In this work, a new approach of an MIMO FMCW
as shown in Fig. 1. Both the TX and the RX antennas are
radar system is presented. This system is used as part of a
placed along the y-axis in a linear fashion. The distance
wearable guidance system for visually impaired people and
between the RX antennas is dRX = λ0,min 2 with λ0,min being
scans a sector of the users environment for possible obstacles.
the minimum wavelength in freespace within the regarded
The application scenario requires a miniaturized low-power
frequency range. Altogether total RX aperture size is 7dRX .
system, with high performance and reliability at a low cost.
The distance between the TX antennas is dTX = 8dRX .
Considering the immense hardware requirements of OFDM
Consequently the virtual array is obtained by a discrete spacial
radar measurement and processing [5][6], a system design
convolution of all TX and RX antenna elements. The resulting
based on FMCW technology is chosen.
virtual array is linear with Nv = NTX · NRX = 48 equally
The system has a linear virtual array. In order to overcome
spaced virtual antenna elements along the y-axis. The distance
the spacial limitation and to expand the target localization
between the virtual antenna elements is dV = dRX . The angular
into three dimensions, a special kind of TX antenna with a
resolution in azimuth, specified by the approximated 3 dB

978-2-87487-057-6 © 2019 EuMA 37 2– 4 Oct 2019, Paris, France

Fig. 2. Schematic depiction of the frequency dependent beam steering of the
TX antenna.
beamwidth [9] of the virtual array main lobe, can be estimated
by
λ0,c
∆φ3dB ≈ 50.8◦ = 2.2◦ (1)
dV NV
with λ0,c being the wavelength in freespace at center frequency.
While the azimuth resolution is high for the linear virtual
array there would be no estimation of the direction of
arrival estimation (DOA) possible in elevation with the use
of conventional unfocused TX and RX antennas. In order to
overcome this spatial limitation a special type of TX antenna
described in section III is used. In particular the main lobe of
this TX antenna is focused in elevation (θ) and its direction
is dependent on the frequency of the feeded RF signal. The
frequency dependent beam steering is illustrated in Fig. 2.
During a frequency sweep from 77 to 81 GHz the main
lobe is steered continuously from a certain elevation angle
to broadside (θ81 = 0◦ ). Meanwhile the direction of the
unfocused RX main lobe does not change significantly during
the frequency sweep. Since the available bandwidth is spread
over the observed space the range resolution is depleted in a
certain amount.
III. TX/RX A NTENNAS
The frequency steerable TX antennas are realized in form
of substrate integrated slotted waveguides. This type of antenna
was already examined by several groups such as [10]. In this
work simulations of the antenna has been performed with
Rogers RO4350B as the substrate material. The antenna can
be regarded as a subarray consisting of six slots. Each slot acts
as an antenna element of a uniform linear array and therefore
the TX antenna beam is focused in elevation. Since the slots
are fed in series the phase occurring at each slot is dependent
on the input frequency of the TX antenna. Therefore the beam
is steered by frequency as shown in Fig. 3 for 77 GHz (a) and
81 GHz (b), respectively. At 77 GHz the main lobe is tilted
towards θ77 = 45◦ . With rising frequency the phase difference
between the slots gets smaller until it reaches zero and the
main lobe is steered towards θ81 = 0◦ . The 3 dB beamwidth
improves from ∆θ3dB, 77 = 24.2◦ to ∆θ3dB, 81 = 16.5◦ . Due to
high substrate losses the gain of of the TX antennas is merely
around GTX = 3.6 dB which was already examined by [8].
The RX antennas consist of two patch antennas fed in
series. The main reason to employ this antenna type is founded
in the fact that patch antennas can be placed in a λ2 spacing side
by side. This is not possible for the widespread TX antennas.
38
(a)
(b)
Fig. 3. Simulated TX, RX and combined farfield antenna gain in dB over θ:
(a) 77 GHz; (b) 81 GHz.
Similar to the TX antennas the main lobe of the RX antennas
is also steered with its input frequency. However, the effect is
much weaker due to the small electrical length between the
patches. As shown in Fig. 3 the main lobe of the RX antennas
is steered from θ77 = 24◦ to θ81 = 8◦ . The 3 dB beamwidth of
the RX antennas is about ∆θ3dB = 65◦ and does not change
significantly with frequency.
For the direction of arrival estimation in elevation the
combined pattern is needed which can be computed by the
multiplication of the TX and RX pattern. The combined pattern
is shown in Fig. 3 for 77 GHz and 81 GHz, respectively. Due
to the large beamwidth of the RX antennas the TX and RX
main lobe peaks do not have to be synchronized in order to
reach a high combined gain.
IV. S IGNAL P ROCESSING
A common approach for signal processing of MIMO
FMCW radar measurements with a linear virtual antenna array
is the use of a 2D FFT. In this case an FFT is computed
on every virtual antenna channel in order to generate a range
profile. On this data an second FFT is computed on every range
bin across the channels for the DOA estimation. The use of
frequency steered antennas enables an additional approach for
the signal processing which is the DOA estimation in the third
dimension.
Signal processing is based on a short-time Fourier
transform algorithm (STFT). The basic concept is show in
Fig. 4. A defined time window, referenced as frame, of the IF
signal is selected in each processing step, which corresponds
to a part of the full frequency sweep of the RF signal. On each
Fig. 4. Schematic representation of the short-time Fourier transform algorithm.
Fig. 5. Block diagram of the signal processing algorithm.
frame a windowing and range FFT computation is performed
to gain the range profiles. But because only a specific part of
the IF signal is taken into account, only a specific frequency
region is used as well. For this purpose a weighted mean beam
profile has to be taken into account for the processed frame.
Furthermore the windowing function used before applying the
FFT computation has to be considered because every RF bin is
related to a frequency dependent combined beam pattern of the
TX and RX antennas. So a weighted combined beam pattern
and it’s peak position has to be computed of every frame
for correct presentation. A block diagram of the described
algorithm is given in Fig. 5.
The IF data is stored in a two dimensional matrix,
consisting of a time dimension and a virtual antenna channel
dimension. To perform the described STFT processing for a
fixed azimuth angle, an FFT has to be computed on the IF
data matrix across the virtual antenna channel dimension first.
This results in a matrix with IF signals split according to
their azimuth angle, which is defined by φ = arcsin(k) with
k ∈ {−1, · · · , 1}.
Because only part of the IF signal is used, the bandwidth
used in each processed frame is reduced compared to the
bandwidth covered by the frame width Wframe which results
in lowered range resolution.
V. S IMULATION
The weighted combined gain over elevation for constant
azimuth of a frame is given by (2).
39
Fig. 6. Elevation angle of beam peak in relation to weighted frame frequency
and azimuth angle.
Fig. 7. Elevation 3 dB width of beam peak in relation to weighted frame
frequency and azimuth angle.
P
w(n) · ~gRFbin
n
~gmean (fframe , Wframe ) = P (2)
w(n)
n
with n ∈ {fframe , fframe + 1, · · · , fframe + Wframe }.
With this gain pattern, the elevation position of the peak
gain and therefore direction of the processed effective beam
θpeak as well as the 3 dB beam width ∆θ3dB in elevation can be
computed for every frame. θpeak is shown in Fig. 6 and ∆θ3dB
is shown in Fig. 7 for varying φ and fframe . Wframe = 128 and
Wstep = 1 with a total of 512 data samples being processed.
this results in 1 GHz bandwidth in each frame for the 4 GHz
sweep bandwidth being used in the system.
As shown in Fig. 6 the elevation angle covered by the
steered beam is ∆θ = 31◦ at φ = 0◦ and ∆θ = 41◦ at
φ = ±90◦ . This can be increased by smaller frame width
Wframe but at the cost of range resolution. As shown in Fig. 7
the effective beam is most focused with ∆θ3dB = 16.8◦ for
highest fmean = 80 GHz which corresponds to θpeak = −6◦ . It
is least focused with ∆θ3dB = 25.7◦ for lowest fmean = 77 GHz
which corresponds to θpeak = −47◦ . This is linked directly to
the combined beam pattern given by antenna design and shows
limitation of the system.
Based on the system design a simulated scenario of
several point targets has been created. The simulation generates
complex IF signals with bandwidth, frequency sweep duration
and sampling rate matching the used novel MIMO FMCW
Fig. 8. 2D FFT representation of a seven target scenario in Cartesian
coordinates.
Table 1. Target positions for simulated scenario in m.
Target 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 was depicted. A major tradeoff exists between the angular
x 4.0 8.0 15.0 7.0 3.0 15.0 15.0
y 0.0 0.0 0.0 -2.5 1.0 -6.0 7.0
z -1.0 -4.0 -3.0 -1.0 -1.0 -1.0 -1.0
radar. For simulation of the correct amplitude of the signal,
antenna gain, antenna feed losses, radar cross section and
the distance of the send and receive path are considered by
the simulation model. The coordinate center is set to the
center of the system PCB. Every target reflection is computed
with gain data from the system antenna simulations, with
linear interpolation in frequency, azimuth and elevation being
used. Antenna reflections and crosstalk are not adopted by the
simulation model.
The scenario consists of seven point targets, each simulated
with an RCS of 10 m2 . Their position is given in Tab. 1.
Three targets are positioned in the φ = 0◦ elevation plane
at different heights. The other targets are placed off center.
2D FFT computation results of the entire IF data matrix are
show in Fig. 8. As can be seen, each target can be located with
it’s correct azimuth angle and range but slightly wrong placed
in Cartesian coordinates. This is because of the translation in
z-direction. This error could be corrected with target detection
with elevation DOA estimation.
For φ = 0◦ the results of the STFT algorithm are
shown in Fig. 9. The x and z position of each target can be
clearly determined at the correct position. The targets appear
angular blurred in elevation which is partly owed by the rather
large 3 dB beamwidth of the TX antennas. A smaller 3 dB
beamwidth can be achieved by the use of more slots for the
TX antennas. However, this would lead to a smaller amount of
the full bandwidth spread over the scanned elevation sections
and therefore to a lower range resolution.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper a novel concept for a novel MIMO FMCW
radar system with a high angular resolution has been presented.
This system was realized by a linear virtual array with
frequency steered antennas on transmit. In order to evaluate the
measured IF signal data a special signal processing algorithm
including a frame based short-time Fourier transform has been
introduced. The algorithm was then applied to a simulated
scenario built up from seven point targets. As the result of the
40
Fig. 9. STFT representation of the scenario at 0◦ azimuth angle in Cartesian
coordinates.
simulated images the high angular resolution of the system
resolution in elevation, defined by the 3 dB beamwidth of the
TX antennas, and the range resolution, defined by the amount
of bandwidth available per elevation section.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work has been supported by the “European Regional
Development Fund” (ERDF 2014-2020) and the Ministry of
Health, Equalities, Care and Ageing of the State of North
Rhine-Westphalia (Grant EFRE-0800371).
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