Design of a millimeter-wave dish-antenna based 3-D IIR radar digital velocity filter

Abstract

The enhancement of radar signatures corresponding to an object traveling in a particular velocity is proposed. The method employs a parabolic dish and focal plane array (FPA) processor together with a network resonant multi-dimensional recursive digital velocity filter. An FPA-fed parabolic dish antenna creates multiple radio frequency (RF) beams. The RF beams can sense simulated moving objects that are illuminated using mm-wave (90 GHz) RF energy. A 3-D IIR digital velocity filter is applied on the simulated radar signals to enhance signatures that are moving at a direction of interest at a given speed while significantly suppressing undesired interfering signals traveling at other velocities and additive Gaussian noise. A dish of diameter 0.5 m and focal length of 30 cm with an FPA with 4096 antenna elements (64×64) arranged in a dense square array is simulated using an electromagnetic field simulator. The resulting electric field intensity profiles are processed to extract the signatures of interest. Simulation results show an average signal to interference improvement of 7 dB with single interference and 6 dB for multiple interference. Proposed method exhibits an average signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) improvement of 6 dB for input SINR of -15 dB. All results are simulation based. No fabrications have been attempted at this point.