Design of a Sensor Agnostic FMCW-Compatible Transponder for Automotive Applications

Abstract

The design and simulation of a mm-wave radar transponder is presented. The transponder is designed to oper- ate with FMCW-based radars, commonly found in automotive and other civil applications. In particular, the device is designed such that it is very agnostic in terms of the radar sensor waveform details. The transponder can be used for different purposes, but two main application areas are presented in this paper: 1. Usage as an artificial target with applications in radar calibration and 2. Usage to simultaneously localize (using the radars ordinary functions) a target and receive small packages of data, similar to RFID, but operating together with mm-wave FMCW radars.