1036 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 69, NO.
1, JANUARY 2021
Multimode W-Band and D-Band
MIMO Scalable Radar Platform
Wael Abdullah Ahmad , Member, IEEE, Maciej Kucharski , Arzu Ergintav , Salah Abouzaid,
Jan Wessel , Associate Member, IEEE, Herman Jalli Ng , Member, IEEE,
and Dietmar Kissinger , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract— This article demonstrates the implementation of
80- and 160-GHz four-channel radar sensors employing the
modular scalable platform based on a single relaxed 40-GHz
local oscillator and cascadable transceiver chips. The first
two channels synthesize 2 × 2 multiple-input–multiple-output
(MIMO) radar at 80 GHz with onboard 8 × 1 patch
arrays for enhanced angular resolution, whereas the other
two channels employ 160-GHz system-on-chip transceivers
with integrated wideband 6-dBi micromachined on-chip anten-
nas for enhanced range resolution. Configurable modula-
tors in each transceiver offer ranging, direction-of-arrival
(DoA) estimation, velocity/vibrations measurement, and data
communication applications. Frequency-modulated continuous
wave (FMCW) is demonstrated with 4-/8-GHz sweep bandwidth
at 80/160 GHz corresponding to 3.75-/1.875-cm range resolution.
Chirp-sequence FMCW is employed to measure the heartbeat
rate of a human, and 78 bpm is measured with 0.06-Hz Doppler
resolution. Mechanical vibration rate from a loudspeaker is mea-
sured using the CW radar technique, whereas phase-modulated
continuous wave is employed for distant selective vibrations mea-
surement. Time-division multiplexing MIMO radar is configured
at 80 GHz in a multitarget scenario for DoA estimation, and
the targets are distinguished with 25◦ effective angular resolu-
tion. Frequency-division multiplexing MIMO radar technique is
demonstrated based on -modulation and binary phase shift
keying (BPSK) modulators. Furthermore, the 10-Mb/s BPSK
data communication link is evaluated at 80 GHz with a 20-dB
signal-to-noise ratio at 1 m. The 160-GHz vector modulators offer
additional modulations.
Manuscript received October 7, 2020; accepted October 26, 2020. Date
of publication December 1, 2020; date of current version January 5, 2021.
This work was supported in part by the German Federal Ministry of Education
and Research (BMBF) through the EMPHASE Research Project, in which an
integrated energy-efficient multiprocessor platform for autonomous electric
driving is developed, and in part by the Research Project Radar4FAD.
(Corresponding author: Wael Abdullah Ahmad.)
Wael Abdullah Ahmad, Arzu Ergintav, and Jan Wessel are with the
Leibniz-Institut für innovative Mikroelektronik (IHP), 15236 Frankfurt
(Oder), Germany (e-mail: wael.abdullah@ieee.org; ergintav@ihp-
microelectronics.com; wessel@ihp-microelectronics.com).
Maciej Kucharski was with the Leibniz-Institut für innovative Mikroelek-
tronik (IHP), 15236 Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. He is now with the
Sensing and Imaging Research Center, 81-363 Gdynia, Poland (e-mail:
maciejkucharski89@gmail.com).
Salah Abouzaid was with the Leibniz-Institut für innovative Mikroelektronik
(IHP), 15236 Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, and also with the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Munich, 80333
Munich, Germany (e-mail: s.abouzaid@tum.de).
Herman Jalli Ng was with the Leibniz-Institut für innovative
Mikroelektronik (IHP), 15236 Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. He is now
with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology,
Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, 76133 Karlsruhe, Germany
(e-mail: herman.j.ng@ieee.org).
Dietmar Kissinger is with the Institute of Electronic Devices and Cir-
cuits, Ulm University, 89081 Ulm, Germany (e-mail: dietmar.kissinger@
uni-ulm.de).
Color versions of one or more figures in this article are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMTT.2020.3038532.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2020.3038532
0018-9480 © 2020 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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Index Terms— Doppler radar, delta–sigma modulation,
millimeter-wave radar, multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO)
radar, planar arrays, radar applications, system-on-chip (SoC),
vital signs monitoring.
I. I NTRODUCTION
R ADAR technology has recently been used for human
movement detection, such as hand and finger gesture
recognition [1] for touchless computer interaction and vital
signs monitoring in the healthcare industry [2]–[5]. Measuring
the heartbeat and respiration rates remotely and in a contactless
manner is of extreme importance to prevent disease spreading
during pandemic seasons, such as COVID-19 phase where
respiratory symptoms are exhibited [6]. This is in addition to
a large variety of automotive [7]–[9] and industrial [10]–[12]
applications where the environment is not suitable for other
sensing technologies, for instance, during rains, fog, and dust
on highways or at very high melting temperature during steel
patterning and cutting. These kinds of applications require
multipurpose compact sensors capable of high-precision high-
resolution ranging [13] and imaging. Silicon-based integrated
circuits processes currently achieve reasonable miniaturization
and power levels that make millimeter-wave radars feasible.
Beyond 100 GHz, the inherent bandwidth of the circuitry
is large enough to offer high range resolution. Furthermore,
the antenna size becomes small allowing system-on-chip (SoC)
implementation. However, the electromagnetic propagation
loss in free space limits radar applications at these frequen-
cies to short-range applications, such as imaging and gesture
recognition. On the other hand, higher transmitted power is
available below 100 GHz, which offers a high radar dynamic
range (DR) for medium- and large-range applications at the
expense of the antenna size. Building scalable radar sensors
[8], [14] based on a modular architecture makes use of
both benefits. Fig. 1 shows a functional block diagram of a
single-channel multimode radar where the local oscillator (LO)
frequency is scaled to the required frequency. The modulators
in the transmitter (TX) and LO paths are configured according
to the required radar mode of operation for the given appli-
cation where range, angle, velocity, and vibration rate can be
detected. In this article, the design of the modular scalable
80- and 160-GHz four-channel radar front end presented in
[15] is expanded with an overview of all the employed chips.
The two radar techniques applied in [15] are elaborated,
and the measurements of additional four radar techniques
are demonstrated where the capabilities of the radar sensor
at each band are highlighted and distinguished. In addition,
the capability of data communication over radar is verified.
AHMAD et al.: MULTIMODE W-BAND AND D-BAND MIMO SCALABLE RADAR PLATFORM
Fig. 1. Conceptual architecture of a single-channel multimode radar in
conjunction with possible applications where range, angle, velocity, and
vibration rate can be measured.
The system is implemented on a single board, as shown in
Fig. 2. Details of the four-channel building blocks as well
as the system design aspects are presented in Section II.
Section III demonstrates six radar techniques with measure-
ments of 1-D and 2-D ranges of static targets, mechanical
vibration rates of vibrating targets, and heartbeat rate of a
person. Furthermore, a data communication experiment is
followed. This article is then concluded in Section IV.
II. F OUR -C HANNEL W-/D-BAND R ADAR S ENSOR D ESIGN
Fig. 2(a) shows the block diagram of the four-channel
modular radar sensor. It follows the modular scalable archi-
tecture concept [8], [14] where the LO signal is amplified
and bypassed from the input of each channel to its output
in order to drive next-in-chain units. The system is scalable
not only in the number of channels but also in the frequency
of operation and the inherent bandwidth in turn. The system
comprises a single LO phase-locked loop (PLL) chip, two
80-GHz transceiver (TRX) chips connected to onboard 8 × 1
differential patch antenna arrays, and two 160-GHz bistatic
radar front-end SoCs equipped with highly efficient on-chip
patch antennas. All the chips are mounted on a single board
where the 40-GHz LO signal is routed among them unlike
the 60- and 120-GHz system in [14], where the LO signal is
routed through coaxial cables.
A. PLL and Transceiver Chips
The system is based on a single LO PLL chip that
feeds four TRX chips that were fabricated using the
130-nm silicon–germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS technology offer-
ing heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) with f T / f MAX
of 300/500 GHz [16]. The PLL chip [8], [17] is composed
of a serial peripheral interface (SPI) module, phase and
frequency detector (PFD), charge pump (CP), loop low-pass
filter (LPF), 40-GHz voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO),
divide-by-eight prescaler, multimodulus divider (MMD), and
frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) generator as
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1037
-modulator with 27-bit fractional resolution and waveform
generator (WG). LO and divider (DIV) buffers are integrated
for driving external loads. Fig. 3(a) and (b) shows the PLL
functional block diagram and its die photograph, respectively,
for reference. The 80-GHz TRX chip includes a doubler cir-
cuit, whereas the 160-GHz chip includes a quadrupler circuit
[18], which relaxes the LO signal frequency and extends the
operating bandwidth, for instance, a tuning range of 2 GHz of
the VCO translates to 4-GHz bandwidth in the 80-GHz radar
channels and 8 GHz in the 160-GHz radar channels. Each
80-GHz TRX chip is equipped with two binary phase shift
keying (BPSK) modulators in the TX and LO paths, achiev-
ing 9-dBm TX power and 24-dB in-phase–quadrature (IQ)
receiver (RX) gain. The chip consumes 430 mW from a 3.3-V
supply and occupies an area of 3.72 mm2 . Fig. 4(a) and (b)
shows the 80-GHz transceiver block diagram and the chip
photograph for reference. Full details of the 80-GHz TRX chip
are reported in [8] where another version of the chip equipped
with a vector modulator is reported as well.
On the other hand, the 160-GHz TRX chip is developed and
added to the scalable platform chipset [8], [14]. It achieves
13-dBm TX power and 24-dB IQ RX gain and is equipped
with a vector modulator and two on-chip patch antennas
synthesizing a bistatic radar sensor front-end SoC, which
reduces the crosstalk between the TX and RX paths not to
desensitize the RX. Fig. 5(a) and (b) shows the block diagram
of the 160-GHz front-end SoC and the die photograph of the
chip layout, respectively. The multiplied-by-four LO signal is
split between the TX and the RX using a Wilkinson power
splitter. The TX signal is fed to the vector modulator and then
amplified by a three-stage cascode power amplifier. On the
RX side, the signal is amplified using a three-stage cascode
low-noise amplifier and split between two Gilbert-cell mixers
for IQ downconversion. A branchline coupler is employed for
quadrature LO signals’ generation. The chip consumes 1.05 W
from a 3.3-V supply and occupies a silicon area of 5.43 mm2 .
B. Antennas and Antenna Arrays
Each 80-GHz TRX chip is connected to a planar TX
and RX differential 8 × 1 corporate-fed patch antenna array
with 15-dBi gain and 130◦ azimuthal half-power beamwidth
(HPBW) [7]. The arrays are connected at the TX and RX side
of each TRX through stepped-impedance bond wire compen-
sation networks [19]. As pointed in Fig. 2(a), the distance
between the two TX arrays and between the two RX arrays
is λ0 and λ0 /2, respectively, where λ0 is the wavelength of
the electromagnetic wave in free space, which synthesizes
a 2 × 2 uniform linear MIMO array for enhanced radar
angular resolution and unambiguous field of view [9]. Due
to the silicon air trenches [20] available through the localized
backside etching feature in the utilized BiCMOS process,
the 160-GHz on-chip patch antenna achieves 6-dBi gain with
65◦ HPBWs in both principal planes and 3-dB gain bandwidth
of more than 20–160 GHz. The measurements of the antenna
performance are reported in [21].
C. System Integration Considerations
The four-channel radar board is fabricated on Rogers’
RO3003 microwave substrate with 127 μm thickness and a
1038 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 69, NO. 1, JANUARY 2021

Fig. 2. (a) Functional block diagram of the modular scalable 80- and 160-GHz four-channel radar sensor with (b) photograph of the implemented hardware
prototype. Close-up images of the CoB assembly of the TRX chips are given at the tight corners.

Fig. 4. (a) Block diagram and (b) die photograph of the 80-GHz BPSK radar
TRX chip.

the 80-GHz network where an insertion loss of 0.5 dB is

Fig. 3. (a) Block diagram and (b) die photograph of the 40-GHz PLL chip.
relative dielectric constant of 3.0. The substrate was lami-
nated on the FR4 material to provide mechanical stability,
as shown in the stack-up in Fig. 6(a). The 200-μm-thick
PLL and 80-GHz TRX chips are mounted and wire bonded
on metallized cavities to reduce the bond wires lengths and
their inductances in turn, whereas the 160 -GHz chip is
mounted directly on a metal island without cavity that serves
as a reflector for the on-chip antennas. Differential multi-
stage stepped-impedance bond wire compensation networks
are introduced at 40 GHz at the input and output LO ports of
all chips, and 80-GHz networks are introduced at the TX and
RX onboard antenna ports. Fig. 6(b) shows the finite-element
method (FEM) electromagnetic simulated S-parameters of
exhibited around 80 GHz. Close-up images of the chip-on-
board assembly with bond wires of the 80-GHz TRX and
160-GHz chips are shown in Fig. 2(b). As shown in Fig. 2(b),
the top layer of the board includes only the chips and
the onboard arrays, while all connectors and surface-mount
device (SMD) components, including an off-chip (LPF) and a
100-MHz reference crystal oscillator (CXO), are placed at the
board backside to reduce the backscattering effects. The TRX
modulation inputs and intermediate frequency (IF) outputs
are arranged in two pin headers. These pin headers can be
extended by adding additional channels to the radar platform.
III. R ADAR T ECHNIQUES AND A PPLICATIONS
The integrated ramp generator in the PLL chip offers
direct implementation of the FMCW radar. In addition,
the BPSK modulators in the 80-GHz TRX chips allow
modulating the radar TX signal with a 1-bit binary stream
for data communication or frequency-division multiplex-
ing (FDM) multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) radar
implementation [22] by delta–sigma () modulation. The

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AHMAD et al.: MULTIMODE W-BAND AND D-BAND MIMO SCALABLE RADAR PLATFORM
Fig. 5. (a) Block diagram and (b) die photograph of the bistatic 160-GHz
radar sensor SoC with micromachined on-chip patch antennas.
Fig. 6. (a) Substrate stack-up of the four-channel radar board and (b) FEM
simulation of the 80-GHz differential bond wire interconnects between the
80-GHz TRX chips and the onboard arrays.
data communication is useful for vehicle-to-vehicle commu-
nication and traffic networking in automotive applications,
whereas the FDM-MIMO is useful for enhancing the radar
angular resolution through synthesizing virtual array elements.
In addition, distant selective Doppler radar technique [23],
[24] is also applicable by modulating the radar signal with a
predefined delay that corresponds to a predefined range, which
is useful to monitor the vibration of given objects isolating
vibrations from unwanted targets, e.g., monitoring arbitrary
machines in a factory or monitoring a patient’s vital signs in
a multipatient hospital room. On the other hand, the vector
modulators in the 160-GHz radar SoCs can also be used
for phase tuning in beamforming applications, for complex
carrier modulations, or in an orthogonal frequency-division
multiplexing (OFDM) radar as well.
A. FMCW Radar for Ranging
The main idea of the FMCW radar is to modulate the
frequency of the TX signal linearly in the time domain in
order to gain the information of its round trip delay time in the
frequency domain. The round-trip delay time is directly pro-
portional to the target range. The higher the sweep bandwidth,
the better the range resolution.
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1039
The modular radar board is configured in the FMCW mode
for range measurement with a linear chirp in the short-range
radar (SRR) frequency range of 77–81 GHz, i.e., a sweep
bandwidth of 4–79 GHz and a sweep duration of 1 ms.
This corresponds to 8-GHz sweep bandwidth for the 160-GHz
channels. The range measurement setup, shown schematically
in Fig. 7(a), was built in an anechoic chamber to mitigate
the clutter during the measurement where a single trihedral
corner reflector (CR) was fixed on a slider and used as a static
target. The corresponding IF output signal from each radar
channel is captured by R&S real-time oscilloscope (RTO)
RTO1044 after passing through an LPF with a cutoff frequency
of BIF = 1 MHz. Fast Fourier transform (FFT) was then
performed in MATLAB with a Hanning window function
and the corresponding range measurements from the 80- and
160-GHz channels are shown in Fig. 7(b) and (c), respectively,
at different distances from the sensor. Strong peaks are shown
at the correct locations of the CR in each case. The peaks are
narrower from the 160-GHz channel due to the corresponding
wider sweep bandwidth, but they are stronger from 80 GHz
due to the higher antenna gain and the lower free-space loss at
80 GHz. Each measurement was repeated 1000 times, and the
ranging precision σ R from each channel was quantified as the
standard deviation of these 1000 measurements and plotted
in Fig. 8. The 80-GHz radar channel achieves an excellent
ranging precision of 9 μm at 1 m due to its high SNR, whereas
the ranging precision from the 160-GHz channel is 200 μm
at 1.5 m.
To distinguish the capabilities of each radar channel, the sce-
nario in Fig. 9(a) was set up in the anechoic chamber where
two large trihedral CRs with a side length of 15 cm cor-
responding to a radar cross section (RCS) [25] of 150 m2
at 80 GHz as well as another small trihedral CR with a
side length of 10 cm or an RCS of 30 m2 at 80 GHz
were positioned in front of the sensor. The two large CRs
are used as strong targets and located very close together at
1.18 and 1.23 m, whereas the small CR was fixed 5.4 m
far from the sensor to mimic targets with low RCS. The
corresponding range measurements from both radar channels
are shown in Fig. 9(b). The peaks at 0 m correspond to the
TX-RX crosstalk of each sensor. The bond wires and the PCB
antennas contribute to the crosstalk of the 80-GHz channel,
while the crosstalk from the 160 GHz channel possesses
no PCB contribution, and this is why the 80-GHz channel
exhibits 40-dB crosstalk, which is worse than 60 dB from
the 160-GHz channel. At 1.2 m, the 80-GHz channel with
4-GHz sweep bandwidth could not resolve the two close CRs,
while two narrow peaks are shown from the 160-GHz channel
with 8-GHz sweep bandwidth. On the other hand, the DR
of the 160 GHz radar is 40 dB compared to 60 dB from
the 80-GHz channel. The small CR at 5.4 m was detected
with an SNR of 25 and 35 dB by the 160- and 80-GHz
radar channels, respectively, which highlights the ability of
the 80-GHz radar to detect low-reflecting targets. To quantify
the radar range resolution R of each channel, a close-up
view of the large CRs peaks is shown in Fig. 9(c) where the
effective range resolution is defined as the 6-dB peak width.
The 2-GHz LO sweep bandwidth translates to 4 and 8 GHz
1040 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 69, NO. 1, JANUARY 2021
Fig. 7. (a) Conceptual block diagram of the FMCW range measurement setup with a single CR on a slider and the corresponding range measurement results
from (b) 80- and (c) 160-GHz channels.
Fig. 8. Measured FMCW ranging precision of the 80- and 160-GHz radar
channels.
at 80- and 160-GHz channels, which offers an ideal theoret-
ical range resolution of 3.75 versus 1.875 cm, respectively.
The measured effective range resolution is 11 and 4.5 cm
or 2.9 and 2.4 times the ideal value at 80 and 160 GHz,
respectively. The used Hanning window function in the FFT
contributes to this difference with a factor of 2 and the rest
contribution is jointly due to the ramp linearity and the phase
noise of the LO signal.
The FMCW technique can also be used to measure the
velocity/vibration of moving targets as shown in Section III-B.
B. Chirp-Sequence FMCW Radar for Vital Signs Monitoring
Processing multiple chirps together allows extracting the
speed or the vibration rate of a moving target by obtaining a
range-Doppler map, where the phase history of the beat signal
at a selected range is used to extract the Doppler information
for the desired target by applying a second (Doppler) FFT.
The range resolution depends on the sweep bandwidth, and
the Doppler resolution is a function of the measurement time
of the multiple chirps. Fig. 10(a) shows a real experiment of
measuring the heartbeat rate of a human where the sensor
is configured in the chirp-sequence FMCW mode and fixed
in front of a human and a stationary reference CR. Since
reflections from the human body are weaker than from a
metallic object, the high DR 80-GHz channel is utilized and
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the same sweep time 1 ms and the sweep bandwidth of
4 GHz at 79 GHz of the last setup are configured. A chirp
sequence of 8192 chirps was processed together offline after
16.384-s measurement time corresponding to a Doppler res-
olution of 0.061 Hz, which is fine enough to capture the
heartbeat rate in the range of 1.2 Hz. Fig. 10(b) shows the
result of the range FFT where two peaks are shown at 1.5 and
4.8 m corresponding to the ranges of the person and the static
reflector, respectively. The Doppler FFT is then performed
at the person’s range bin, 1.5 m, to detect the vibration
rate caused by the human. Fig. 10(c) shows the result of
the Doppler FFT where a strong peak is shown at a rate
of 1.3 Hz that corresponds to a heartbeat rate of 78 bpm.
Another peak at around 0.2 Hz corresponding to the person’s
respiration rate is buried in the dc offset peak. To get rid of
this unclear measurement of such low-frequency respiration
rate,  modulation can be utilized in conjunction with the
BPSK modulator in the TX path to shift the spectrum of the
radar IF output signal away from the dc [26].
C. CW Radar for Doppler Measurement
In CW Doppler radars, a single tone is transmitted, and
the reflected signal contains the Doppler frequencies of all
objects moving or vibrating in the radial direction but without
range information since no TX bandwidth is transmitted. The
received signal is mixed with a copy of the transmitted signal
to obtain the baseband signal with the Doppler frequencies
that are proportional to the relative radial velocities of moving
targets. In case of vibrating objects, the phase history of
the baseband signal contains information about the periodic
motion of the vibrating targets, e.g., the chest wall due to the
heart and the lung vibrations or factory equipment vibrations.
The Doppler resolution depends on the measurement time
and transmitted frequency. Therefore, for the same active
observation time, the 160-GHz channel achieves 2× finer
Doppler resolution than the 80-GHz channel, or for a given
Doppler resolution, the 160-GHz channel requires a shorter
measurement time than that required by the 80-GHz channel,
which relaxes the digital signal processing requirements.
Disabling the modulators in the radar sensor and configuring
the LO PLL for a single-tone operation activates the Doppler
mode. Fig. 11(a) and (b) shows a Doppler measurement setup
AHMAD et al.: MULTIMODE W-BAND AND D-BAND MIMO SCALABLE RADAR PLATFORM 1041

Fig. 9. (a) FMCW range measurement setup in an anechoic chamber where two large CRs are used as very close static targets together with a small far CR
to mimic targets with small RCS and (b) corresponding range measurement results with (c) close-up plot of the measured effective range resolution.

Fig. 10. (a) Setup of a real experiment of measuring a human’s heartbeat rate using a chirp-sequence FMCW radar where a person and reference stationary
CR are placed in front of the radar sensor. (b) Corresponding range measurement result and (c) Doppler FFT result at the range bin of 1.5 m showing the
person’s vital signs measurement.

Fig. 11. (a) Conceptual block diagram of (b) CW Doppler radar measurement setup in anechoic chamber where a loudspeaker loaded with 20-Hz tone and
a stationary CR are used as vibrating and static targets, respectively. (c) Corresponding Doppler measurement result obtained by the FFT is given.

schematically and in the anechoic chamber, respectively, where
a loudspeaker loaded with a 20-Hz tone is used as a vibrating
target with a vibration rate of f v equals to the loaded tone.
The corresponding FFT result of the output baseband radar
signal is shown in Fig. 11(c) where a strong peak is shown at
the 20-Hz vibrating rate and weaker peaks at its harmonics.
The dc peak is due to the stationary objects as well as the RX
dc offset. This measurement was captured in 20-s observation
time that corresponds to a Doppler resolution of 0.05/0.025 Hz
at 80/160 GHz.
If there are more than one vibrating targets, they can-
not be resolved in range by the Doppler radar. However,
phase-modulated continuous-wave (PMCW) radar resolves the
targets in range as well.
D. PRN-Coded PMCW Radar for Distant Selective Vibration
Measurement
Unlike the CW Doppler mode, in which the radar lacks
the capability to distinguish the targets delivering the Doppler
information, in the PMCW mode, the radar is capable of
concentrating on only one particular target and to suppress
all other undesired targets where the distance of the particular
target is fixed. This is particularly important if the radar
measurements have to be done in a noisy environment with
many targets and the reflected signal from the particular target
at the predefined distance is very weak. As illustrated in the
conceptual block diagram of the multimode radar in Fig. 1,
the LO single tone is modulated with a pseudorandom binary
sequence (PRBS). The modulated TX signal is radiated in

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1042 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 69, NO. 1, JANUARY 2021

Fig. 12. (a) Conceptual block diagram of (b) PRN-coded PMCW radar measurement setup in an anechoic chamber where a loudspeaker loaded with a
40-Hz tone located at R = 1.5 m in front of the sensor. (c) Corresponding Doppler measurement results obtained by FFT are plotted when the delay of the
LO PRBS is equal to and when it is different from the corresponding round trip delay time τ = R/2c.

Fig. 13. PRN-coded PMCW range-Doppler map of the 40-Hz vibrating

loudspeaker located 1.5 m away from the radar sensor.

Fig. 15. 2-D locations of the targets with respect to the sensor at the origin
after applying digital beamforming on two data sets. (a) From the two physical
RXs and on four data sets. (b) From the synthesized four MIMO virtual RXs.

The PRBS clock frequency f clk sets the range resolution,

Fig. 14. FMCW measurement setup in the anechoic chamber with three CRs
located at 1.5, 2, and 3.5 m and at different angles from the sensor.
the direction of several targets. A portion of the TX signal
is reflected by targets and received with various time delays
that correspond to the distances of the targets from the sensor.
The LO signal is also modulated with the same PRBS and
mixed with the RX signal to create the IF signal. If the
PRBS for the LO signal is delayed by an amount of time τ
corresponding to the range R of the particular target intended
to be measured, then the mixing of the LO and the RX signal
will produce the IF signal containing the velocity information
of the target, whereas the velocity information of other tar-
gets will be suppressed by the pseudorandom noise (PRN).
whereas the observation time Tmeas sets the Doppler resolution.
Activating the BPSK modulators in the TX and LO paths
converts the CW Doppler mode into the PMCW mode, which
can be used as a distant selective PRN-coded Doppler radar
[23], [24] to measure the vibrations/velocity of a target located
at a certain distance from the sensor and to suppress all
other target responses elsewhere. Fig. 12(a) and (b) shows the
PMCW radar measurement setup schematically and in the ane-
choic chamber, respectively, where an arbitrary WG (AWG)
was used as a PRBS generator to load the TX BPSK modulator
with an almost perfect autocorrelation sequence (APAS) PRBS
with a length of 400 and with a 1 GS/s rate, which sets the
range resolution as 15 cm. The loudspeaker in the setup was
loaded with a 40-Hz tone and placed at a range R = 1.5 m
from the radar sensor. The LO signal was also modulated

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AHMAD et al.: MULTIMODE W-BAND AND D-BAND MIMO SCALABLE RADAR PLATFORM 1043

Fig. 16. (a) Functional block diagram of (b)  modulation-based FDM-MIMO radar measurement setup.

with the same PRBS but delayed with different delay times.
When the LO delay time is equal to the round trip time
of the loudspeaker range, that is τ = R/2c where c is the
free-space electromagnetic speed, the FFT of the RX output
shows a strong peak at the vibrating rate 40 Hz, as shown
in Fig. 12(c). At other delay times, the vibration is isolated by
around 40 dB as shown by the dashed curve where the delay
time was τ2 = R/2c, which shows the capability of the radar
to focus the measurement on a particular target among others.
The peaks at 50 Hz are always shown due to the alternating
current (ac) power system. These measurements were captured
with a 0.05-Hz Doppler resolution.
Alternatively, the delay time can be swept in a number of
clock cycles to obtain a range-Doppler map of the environ-
ment in front of the radar. Fig. 13 shows the corresponding
range-Doppler map where the loudspeaker is detected at 1.5-m
range with a 40-Hz vibration rate. The illumination at 50 Hz is Fig. 17. RX IF signals spectra of the  modulation-based FDM-MIMO
radar measurement setup.
due to the ac power system, whereas the illumination at dc is
due to stationary targets as well as the circuits’ dc offset. This channels enhances the angular resolution through synthesizing
dc illumination impedes detecting low-frequency vibrations four virtual RXs on the condition that the RX signals from
such as vital signs. Employing  modulation together with each physical TX are distinguishable. The multimode modular
the distant selective PRBS on the same BPSK modulator radar platform allows both time-division multiplexing (TDM)
shifts the RX output spectrum away from dc, yet preserving and FDM.
the distant selectivity feature of the PMCW radar. This is The TDM operation is performed by enabling one TX at
important to monitor the vital signs of a particular patient a time while receiving from the two RXs simultaneously,
in a hospital room where other people exist simultaneously then enabling the second TX and disabling the first one. The
yet remotely without contact. To the authors’ knowledge, this FMCW setup used above was reconfigured in a multitarget
combination is introduced to the first time for heartbeat rate scenario as shown in Fig. 14 where three CRs were placed
and respiration rate measurements and reported in [26]. A  at different ranges and angles from the sensor. The raw
modulation example is given in Section II-F. measured data were captured by the RTO, and then, the digital
beamforming method and the delay-and-sum algorithm [9],
E. TDM-MIMO Radar for Ranging and DoA Estimation [27] were employed to process the resulting four data sets
In addition to resolving targets in the range and vibra- from the four synthesized virtual RXs and to calculate the 2-D
tion dimensions, the direction of arrival (DoA) can also be positions of the three targets in the x y coordinate system where
measured from multiple RXs to distinguish targets at the the sensor is located at the origin. The cascaded daisy-chain
same radial range even moving with the same velocity but LO signal routing in the scalable radar architecture results
coming from different angles. The higher the RX numbers, in asynchronous LO signals at each channel. To get rid of
the better the angular resolution. The physical two 80-GHz the corresponding phase and amplitude mismatch in the radar
channels allow angle measurement but with a limited angular IF spectra of the virtual RXs, a calibration process is carried
resolution. The 2 × 2 MIMO implementation of these two out before the beamforming signal processing by performing

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1044 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 69, NO. 1, JANUARY 2021
Fig. 18. (a) Functional block diagram of the BPSK data communication example setup and (b) corresponding received IF signal.
a reference measurement using a reference target located at
a relative angle of 0◦ from the sensor [28]. The deviations
of the amplitudes and phases in the obtained results of the
virtual array elements from the values of the first virtual array
element are stored as calibration values. Then, the phase and
amplitude mismatch of the IF spectra in the real measurement
is corrected by compensating the stored calibration values.
Fig. 15(a) and (b) shows the corresponding calibrated 2-D
ranging map from the two physical and the four virtual RXs,
respectively. The peaks, marked with white crosses, are shown
at the correct positions of the targets. The effective angular
resolution is enhanced from 50◦ to 25◦ when applying the
TDM-MIMO where four virtual RXs were synthesized instead
of the two physical RXs. Adding more channels on the scalable
platform enhances the angular resolution.
The TDM operation requires a long processing time since
a single TX operates at a time. Alternatively, FDM can be
applied where all TXs are running simultaneously and the
signal processing is performed in the real time.
F.  Modulation-Based FDM-MIMO Radar
Separating the multiple TX signals during reception
allows the MIMO operation. This separation can also be
performed in the frequency domain. This can be implemented
by employing the BPSK modulators in the TX paths to
modulate a predefined bit stream on the radar carrier signal
f t in each TX. A first-order  modulator was designed in
MATLAB and used to generate two predefined bit streams
for ideal single-period sine waves [22]. These two predefined
bit streams were loaded into Tektronix arbitrary AWG 7102.
The AWG was operated with clock frequencies, which
in conjunction with the bit streams lengths correspond
to modulation frequencies f mod1 of 3.33 MHz and f mod2
of 5 MHz. Each bit stream modulates a TX channel,
which leads to two signal components at frequencies of
f t ± f mod1,2 . Modulating each TX signal with a predefined
modulation frequency allows differentiating the corresponding
RX signals, which implements FDM-based MIMO radar.
Fig. 16(a) and (b) shows the measurement setup of the
 modulation-based FDM-MIMO radar where TX1 is
modulated with f mod1 = 3.33 MHz and TX2 is modulated
with f mod2 = 5 MHz. Fig. 17 shows the spectra of the
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TABLE I
P ERFORMANCE S UMMARY OF THE I MPLEMENTED R ADAR T ECHNIQUES
measured corresponding RX IF signals where two sidebands
around each modulation frequency are shown as well as the
overlapped dc components (not shown). This yields real-time
four RX signals while activating the two TXs simultaneously.
G. Data Communication Over Radar
The multimode radar sensor also allows data communication
over radar operation. In this section, a BPSK communication
example is presented. The radar sensor was set up as shown
in Fig. 18(a) where a long single bit stream with a length
of 32 766 000 is applied from an AWG to the baseband inputs
of the TX BPSK modulator to modulate the radar carrier
signal. The bit stream is applied as a PRBS of the polynomial
x 15 + x 14 + 1 with an arbitrary bit rate of 10 Mb/s. A CR
was used to reflect the signal from a 1-m distance, and the
received signal components were captured by an RTO with
20 GS/s. Fig. 18(b) shows the measured received IF signal.
It can be noted that the 10-Mb/s PRBS was correctly received
with a calculated SNR of 20 dB. Although the 10-Mb/s data
rate was chosen arbitrarily to verify the data communication
functionality of the multimode radar, the received signal
quality implies that data rates higher than 10 Mb/s are achiev-
able. The 160-GHz channels include vector modulators that
offer data communication with complex modulation schemes
as well as phased array and OFDM techniques for future
software-defined digital radars.
AHMAD et al.: MULTIMODE W-BAND AND D-BAND MIMO SCALABLE RADAR PLATFORM
TABLE II
C OMPARISON OF S TATE - OF - THE -A RT M ILLIMETER -WAVE FMCW R ADAR S ENSORS
IV. C ONCLUSION
The modular scalable radar platform was employed to build
a four-channel 80-/160-GHz multimode multipurpose radar
sensor on a single board where the frequency scalability and
number of channels scalability are demonstrated. CW, FMCW,
PMCW, and TDM-MIMO as well as FDM-MIMO radar tech-
niques in conjunction with  modulation and PRN-coded
distant selective Doppler measurement were demonstrated and
applied to measure ranges, velocity/vibrations, and angle of
arrival in multiple applications. Two very close targets were
resolved in range with an effective range resolution of 5 cm
by the 160-GHz channels in the FMCW mode. The 2 ×
2 MIMO synthesis of the 80-GHz channels enhanced the
effective angular resolution by 25◦ . A real person’s heartbeat
rate of 78 bpm was measured by the chirp-sequence FMCW
mode. Mechanical vibrations of loaded loudspeakers were
detected by the CW mode with 0.05-Hz Doppler resolution,
whereas the space of vibrating targets was scanned with
15-cm range resolution in the PRN-coded PMCW mode in
order to locate the vibrating targets. Furthermore, vibration
measurement was focused at a particular target at a selective
distance where other target responses were isolated by 40 dB
in the PRN-coded PMCW mode. A performance summary of
demonstrated radar techniques is given in Table I highlighting
the advantages and drawbacks of each, whereas Table II shows
the achieved FMCW performances among other state-of-the-
art millimeter-wave FMCW radars. In addition, a 10-Mb/s
BPSK data communication example with 20-dB SNR at 1
m was conducted to show the capability of utilizing the
multimode radar sensor in hybrid applications, whereas the
160-GHz vector modulators allow other modulation schemes
and OFDM digital radar techniques as well.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank F. Popiela and J. Witthaus
for the support during the board fabrication, chips mounting,
and wire bonding.
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Wael Abdullah Ahmad (Member, IEEE) received
the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electronics engineer-
ing and electrical communication from Ain Shams
University, Cairo, Egypt, in 2007 and 2012, respec-
tively. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at
the mmWave Wireless Group, Leibniz-Institut für
innovative Mikroelektronik (IHP), Frankfurt (Oder),
Germany, with a focus on BiCMOS radar sensors
and integrated antenna technologies.
From 2008 to 2016, he worked on the develop-
ment of RF/microwave high-power amplifiers and
microwave modules at sub-6 GHz and C-band in Egypt. In 2016, he joined
the mmWave Wireless Group, IHP. His current research interests include radar
sensors, multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) systems, integrated RF front
ends, and millimeter-wave (mmWave) antennas and interconnections.
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Maciej Kucharski received the B.Sc. degree in
electrical engineering from the Warsaw University of
Technology, Warsaw, Poland, in 2012, and the M.Sc.
degree in computer engineering from the Technical
University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany, in 2015.
In 2014, he joined the Leibniz-Institut für inno-
vative Mikroelektronik (IHP) GmbH, Frankfurt
(Oder), Germany, where he worked as a Monolithic
Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) Designer
focusing on high-resolution SiGe BiCMOS radar
sensors. Since 2019, he has been with the Sensing
and Imaging Research Center, Gdynia, Poland, where he is currently responsi-
ble for technical activities related to integrated circuit (IC) design. His research
interests include frequency synthesizers, radar sensors, and integrated RF front
ends with a focus on power amplifiers and frequency multiplying circuits.
Arzu Ergintav received the M.S. degree in biomed-
ical engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul,
Turkey, in 2002.
From 2000 to 2004, she worked as a Design
Engineer with the Istanbul Design Center of Cypress
Semiconductors, Istanbul, where she was involved in
the design of CMOS application-specific integrated
circuits (ASICs), specifically frequency generator
chips. From 2005 to 2008, she was with Sabanci
University, Istanbul, as a Research Assistant. Her
main focus was on multiband voltage-controlled
oscillator (VCO) circuits in SiGe technologies for biomedical sensor appli-
cations. Since 2009, she has been with the Leibniz-Institut für innovative
Mikroelektronik (IHP), Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Since 2009, she has been
working on the design of mixed-signal ICs in SiGe BiCMOS technologies for
wireless communication systems. Her main research interest is the design of
frequency synthesizers for space applications and radar sensors.
Salah Abouzaid received the B.Sc. degree in elec-
trical engineering from the King Fahd University of
Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), Dharan, Saudi
Arabia, in 2017, and the M.Sc. degree in commu-
nications engineering from the Technical University
of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany, in 2020.
In 2019, he joined the Leibniz-Institut für innova-
tive Mikroelektronik (IHP GmbH), Frankfurt (Oder),
Germany, as a Scientific Assistant. His current
research interests include machine learning, system-
on-chip technologies, and radar applications, such as
vital signs monitoring and through-the-wall radar imaging.
Jan Wessel (Associate Member, IEEE) was born in
Herten, Germany, in 1981. He received the Dipl.Ing.
degree from Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum,
Germany, in 2009.
Since 2009, he has been with the Leibniz-Institut
für innovative Mikroelektronik (IHP) Microelec-
tronics GmbH, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, where
he is currently responsible for the high-frequency
biosensor development with the Department of Cir-
cuit Design. His current research interests include
millimeter-wave biosensors and low-power circuits
for smart implants and wearable devices.
AHMAD et al.: MULTIMODE W-BAND AND D-BAND MIMO SCALABLE RADAR PLATFORM
Herman Jalli Ng (Member, IEEE) received the
Dipl.Ing. (FH) degree in communication engineering
from the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences,
Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2005, and the Ph.D. degree
in mechatronics from Johannes Kepler University
Linz, Linz, Austria, in 2014.
From 2005 to 2009, he was with Robert Bosch
GmbH, Reutlingen, Germany, as an IC Design
Engineer, for the development of mixed-signal
application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) in
HV-CMOS and BCD technologies for automotive
sensors. In 2009, he joined the Institute for Communications and Information
Engineering, Johannes Kepler University Linz, as a Research Assistant,
where he became a member of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Inte-
grated Radar Sensors. In 2015, he joined the Leibniz-Institut für innovative
Mikroelektronik (IHP) GmbH, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, where he also
headed the Millimeter-Wave Wireless Group and was entrusted with the
planning and coordination of research projects, the acquisition of industrial
contracts and public-funded projects, and the supervision of students. In 2019,
he became a Visiting Professor with the Chongqing University of Posts
and Telecommunications, Chongqing, China. Since 2020, he has been a
Professor with the Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences. His current
research interests include integrated radar sensors, frequency synthesizers and
analog/RF, and mixed-signal circuits.
Dr. Ng received the 2018 VDE ITG-Prize for his outstanding work on
scalable radar sensors and the Best Paper Award for APMC 2019 in systems
and applications for his outstanding work on fully integrated millimeter-wave
(mmWave) radar systems.
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1047
Dietmar Kissinger (Senior Member, IEEE) received
the Dipl.Ing., Dr.Ing., and Habilitation degrees
in electrical engineering from Friedrich-Alexander-
Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU Erlangen-
Nürnberg), Erlangen, Germany, in 2007, 2011, and
2014, respectively.
From 2007 to 2010, he was with Danube Inte-
grated Circuit Engineering, Linz, Austria, where he
worked as a System and Application Engineer with
the Automotive Radar Group. From 2010 to 2014,
he held a position as a Lecturer and the Head of
the Radio Frequency Integrated Sensors Group, Institute of Electronics Engi-
neering, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. From 2015 to
2018, he was with the Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany, and
the Head of the Circuit Design Department, Leibniz-Institut für innovative
Mikroelektronik (IHP) GmbH, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Since 2019, he has
been a Full Professor of high-frequency circuit design with Ulm University,
Ulm, Germany, where he is also the Head of the Institute of Electronic
Devices and Circuits. He has authored or coauthored over 300 technical
articles and holds several patents. His current research interests include
silicon high-frequency and high-speed integrated circuits and systems for
communication and automotive, industrial, security, and biomedical sensing
applications.
Dr. Kissinger is currently a member of the European Microwave Association
(EuMA), the German Information Technology Society (ITG), and the Society
of Microelectronics, Microsystems and Precision Engineering (VDE/VDI
GMM). He also serves as a member for the Technical Program Committee
of the International Microwave Symposium (IMS), the European Solid-State
Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC), and the Technical Program Committee of
the European Microwave Week (EuMW). He further served as a member
for the 2013 and 2017 EuMW Organizing Committee and the 2018 IEEE
MTT-S IMS Steering Committee. He is also an elected member of the
IEEE MTT-S Administrative Committee. He received the 2017 IEEE MTT-S
Outstanding Young Engineer Award, the 2017 VDE/VDI GMM-Prize, and
the 2018 VDE ITG-Prize. He was a co-recipient of more than ten best paper
awards. He also serves as the Chair for the Executive Committee of the IEEE
Radio and Wireless Week (RWW). He was a two-time Chair of the IEEE
Topical Conference on Wireless Sensors and Sensor Networks (WiSNet) and
the IEEE Topical Conference on Biomedical Wireless Technologies, Networks
and Sensing Systems (BioWireless). He was the Chair of the IEEE MTT-S
Technical Committee on Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Integrated Circuits
(MTT-14). He was a nine-time Guest Editor of the IEEE Microwave Magazine.
He has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
M ICROWAVE T HEORY AND T ECHNIQUES .