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Hybrid FMCW-interferometry radar system in the 5.8 GHz ISM band for indoor
precise position and motion detection

Conference Paper  in  IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium digest. IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium · June 2013
DOI: 10.1109/MWSYM.2013.6697623

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 Hybrid FMCW-Interferometry Radar System in the 5.8 GHz ISM
%and for Indoor Precise Position and Motion Detection
Guochao Wang1, Changzhan Gu1, Takao Inoue2 and Changzhi Li1
1
Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA
2
National Instruments, Austin, TX 78759, USA

Abstract — A hybrid FMCW-interferometry radar sensor is

presented. The proposed measurement system incorporates the f (t )
linear frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) mode ,-
BW Δf
and the continuous wave (CW) interferometry mode. The radar
system works in 5.8 GHz ISM band with a bandwidth of 160 f0
  

MHz. Equipped with a special signal processing method, the t

 
 Δt
hybrid system is capable of detecting absolute distance as well as
slow motion. Experiments show that the absolute position Amp (t )
T τ
detection has an average accuracy of 1.65 cm, and the accuracy
of relative motion tracking is better than 2 mm. ,.- 0
Index Terms — FMCW, interferometry, localization, motion 
measurement. 

t
#
 
 
I. INTRODUCTION !#
%

+
The explosive growth of wireless local positioning is
strongly driven by various industrial and medical demands.
Precise localization and tracking are often desired in
manufacturing and many other areas. Local positioning will
&'()*
pave the way for the brand new concept of wireless data
transmissions and transponder systems as well as other
exciting and promising possibilities such as location-sensitive
billing, context-dependent information services and guiding
[1]. Recently, another stimulus to wireless local positioning
comes from the health care industry, where non-contact health
monitoring has shown potentials as an ideal and patient-easy
solution. Currently the popular approach of vital signs
detection including respiration and heartbeat is mainly based
on CW interferometry radar and UWB radar [2]. Despite the
high accuracy and fast operation of interferometry radar
system, it can only detect Doppler shift and thus relative
displacement, but cannot detect absolute distance [3]. This
presents a challenge to a complete wireless healthcare system
with the capability of patient localization. To overcome this
deficiency, stepped-frequency continuous wave (SFCW) radar
was recently applied to healthcare monitoring [4]. However,
due to the relatively lower resolution, SFCW and FMCW
radar are used for large movement sensing such as fall
detection and distance estimation [4]. In practice, ubiquitous
healthcare monitoring, which not only precisely monitors vital
signs signals, but also localizes a subject, is desirable.
In this paper, novel hybrid radar based on the fusion of
FMCW and interferometry modes is proposed to meet this
demand. The system works at 5.8 GHz ISM band and only
occupies a limited bandwidth, making it perfect for any indoor
positioning and motion detection application.

!#
,%-
!#
%:
!#
!"##
          
$%
Fig. 1. (a) Transmitted and received Hybrid signal (b) Down-
converted time domain IF signal (c) Spectrum of the transmitted
Hybrid signal
II. THEORY AND OPERATING PRINCIPLE
The operation principle of the hybrid FMCW-
Interferometry radar system is shown in Fig. 1 (a). The
transmitted signal, represented by the solid line, is a sequence
of alternating single tone signal and linear chirp signal. The
signal reflected from a target, represented by the dash line, has
a similar spectrum characteristic, but lags behind the
transmitted signal with a round-trip time. The mixing of the
transmitted and the reflected signal reveals the frequency
difference information in the FMCW mode and the phase
modulation information in the interferometry mode. Fig. 1 (b)
illustrates the baseband output signal of the down-convertor.
Due to the alternation of the transmitted signal, the down-
converted signal is also divided into chirp period and
interferometry period. The spectrum of the hybrid signal is
shown in Fig. 1 (c). The peak at the low-frequency edge of the
chirp spectrum is the interferometry signal.
During the chirp signal period T, the radar works in the
FMCW mode. Down-converting the reflected signal will
produce an output (denoted as IF signal in this paper) with a
frequency that is proportional to the time of delay (ǻt):
978-1-4673-2141-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
 0.1

I/Q signals [Volt]

0.05

-0.05

-0.1
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
(a) Time [second]
0.1

0.05

Fig. 2. Experiment and system setup 0

-0.05
BW BW 2d
f IF = ⋅ Δt = ⋅ (1) -0.1
0.2 0.205 0.21 0.215 0.22 0.225 0.23
T T c

Normalized Spectrum
1
0.1
where BW is the bandwidth of the chirp signal, T is the 0.8
0.05
duration time, d is the distance and c is the speed of light. 0.6
0
During the interferometry period, the system works as a
continuous wave Doppler radar. The mixer output is a (b) 0.4
0.05
baseband signal whose phase is modulated by the motion of 0.2
-0.1
-5 0 5
the target. The baseband I/Q signals are expressed as [3]: 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2

B(t ) I = cos[θ + 4π x(t ) / λ + Δφ (t )] Frequency [Hz] 4

(2) x 10
0.04

I/Q signals [Volt]

B (t )Q = sin[θ + 4π x (t ) / λ + Δφ (t )] (3) 0.02

0
where ș is a constant phase offset, x(t) is the motion of the (c)
target and ǻ‫(׋‬t) is the residual phase noise. -0.02

The ratio between the duration of chirp signal and -0.04

interferometry signal is adjustable based on different
applications. Although FMCW radar can detect absolute
distance, to the best of the authors' knowledge, the accuracy is
limited to a few centimeters. When higher accuracy is needed
(e.g. vital sign detection), the interferometry mode can easily
measure displacement in millimeter scale. This paper concerns
the indoor slow motion, and the duration ratio was chosen as
1:4.
III. EXPERIMENT
The simplified experiment diagram is shown in Fig. 2.
National Instrument vector signal generator PXIe-5450, which
contains digital waveform generator in conjunction with LO
and up-convertor, generated the hybrid FMCW-interferometry
signal. A Wilkinson power divider splits the hybrid signal into
two paths for the transmitter and the receiver, respectively.
After going through the delay line, the transmitted signal was
amplified and emitted towards the target through an antenna.
The received signal was amplified by an LNA and a gain
block followed by another delay line. Then the received RF
signal was mixed with the transmitted signal to get I/Q IF
output, which would be digitized and sent to PC for signal
processing. The purpose of the delay line is to increase the
round-trip time of flight (RTOF), resulting in a higher IF
frequency. During the chirp signal period, the signal frequency
linearly increases from 5.72 GHz to 5.88 GHz (BW=160
MHz) within a time span of T=2ms. The single tone
0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
Time [second]
Fig. 3. (a) Time domain IF/baseband signal. It should be noted that
the spike is not noise but the FMCW IF signal (b) One period of the
FMCW IF signal (c) Baseband signal after removal of FMCW-based
components
interferometry signal maintains at 5.72 GHz for IJ=8ms.
A plate hosted by a standard imagining respiration gating
platform was placed in front of the radar acting as the target.
Its inherent sinusoidal motion will be compared to the
detected displacement to determine the accuracy. The distance
between the radar and the target was increased from 50 cm to
170 cm with a step size of 10 cm while the motion of the plate
remained the same. An example of the time domain
IF/baseband output signal of the down-converter is shown in
Fig. 3 (a).
Experiment results are summarized in the following. The
absolute distance measurements and the relative motion
tracking are discussed separately.
A. Absolute distance detection
Since the spectrum of a periodical IF signal has a frequency
step of 1/T, it leads to a distance resolution of:
c
Δd = (4)
2 ⋅ BW
Given the limited bandwidth in this paper, to achieve a high
resolution, Fourier transform is only applied to one period of
the IF signal. Fig. 3 (b) helps to understand the procedure of

978-1-4673-2141-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

 2 2

Standard error [mm]

TABLE I

Displacment [cm]
PERFORMANCE OF ABSOLUTE DISTANCE DETECTION 1 1

Reference IF Freq. Measured Standard error

0 0
distance (cm) (Hz) distance (cm) (cm) (a)
50 2118.2 50 0 -1 -1

60 2255.6 58.35 -1.65

-2 -2
70 2317.6 69.85 -0.15 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

80 2366.7 79.18 -0.82 Time [Second]

90 2435.3 91.93 +1.93 1

Channel Q [V]
100 2494.1 102.96 +2.96 0.5
110 2541.2 111.80 +1.80 0
120 2600.0 122.80 +2.80 (b) -0.5
130 2658.8 133.86 +3.86 -1
140 2694.1 140.49 +0.49
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
150 2741.2 149.32 -0.68 Channel I [V]
160 2788.2 158.14 -1.86 Fig .4. (a) Measured displacement and error (b) Trajectory
170 2847.1 169.19 -0.81
motion pattern from the phase of the recovered baseband
signal processing. First, one period of the chirp response at the signal:
time of interest is extracted. After the FFT algorithm, the peak
φ (t ) = arctan[ B (t )Q / B (t ) I ] = 4π x(t ) + θ + Δφ (t ) . (6)
frequency is used to calculate the distance. Because of the
delay line and other electronic components in the system, the Fig. 4 (a) shows the detected motion of plate relative to the
time difference between the transmitted and received signals initial position that is 100 cm to the radar. The trajectory is
that fed into the down-converter does not represent the real
shown in Fig. 4 (b). The deviation between the trajectory and
RTOF. Therefore, a calibration is necessary. Since the aim of
the unit circle comes from the amplitude modulation effect.
the calibration is to offset the residual time delay within the
Measurement accuracy was determined by comparing the
system, only one calibration is needed as long as the hardware
maintains the same. In the experiment, the IF frequency detected motion with the preset motion of the plate. Fig. 4 (a)
obtained at 50 cm served as the calibration reference shows the standard displacement error. The accuracy of all the
frequency. The detected distance can be found as thirteen experiments is within 2 millimeters.

T ⋅c
d = ( f − f ref ) ⋅ + dref (5) IV. CONCLUSION
2 ⋅ BW
A novel hybrid FMCW-Interferometry radar system has
where dref is the reference distance. In this paper it is 50 cm.
been developed and evaluated. The proposed system working
The IF frequencies, measured distances and standard errors
at 5.8 GHz ISM band is capable of indoor short distance and
at each point are listed in Table I. The measurement errors are
motion detection. For absolute distance detection, a
mainly limited by the bandwidth of the chirp signal. Given a
measurement accuracy of less than 4 cm is achieved. For the
certain chirp duration time, a wider bandwidth will produce a
relative motion detection, it has a millimeter scale accuracy.
higher frequency deviation. Consequently, there will be more
The measurement results demonstrate the feasibility and
cycles of IF signal in one duration, resulting in less spectrum
accuracy of the novel hybrid radar for localization and
leakage and higher detection resolution. The maximum error
tracking applications.
is 3.86 cm and the average error is 1.65 cm.
B. Relative motion tracking
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The target plate had an inherent sinusoidal movement
The authors would like to acknowledge NSF for grant
around the nominal distance between the target and radar. The
support (ECCS-1254838; CMMI-1131506), and acknowledge
motion amplitude was 1.5 cm and frequency was 0.51 Hz.
National Instruments for providing funding support as well as
From Fig. 3 (a), note that the baseband output corresponding
RF instruments and AWR design software.
to the chirp signals produce the spikes added to the baseband
Doppler signal. Therefore, for interferometry analysis, FIR
filter is implemented to eliminate the spikes resulted from REFERENCES
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978-1-4673-2141-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

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978-1-4673-2141-9/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE

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