A Fully Integrated Ka-Band FMCW Radar SoC With Baseband Accelerator for Vital Signs Monitoring in 40-nm CMOS

Abstract

This letter presents a fully integrated Ka-band frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar system-on-chip (SoC). To enable compact-size, low-cost, and quick-to-deploy sensors, the FMCW radar transceiver (TRX), radar processor, and microcontroller unit (MCU) are all integrated to reduce the cost and complexity of board-level circuits. Benefiting from the baseband accelerator (BBA) that features a universal vital signs monitoring algorithm, the single-chip sensor can run the full radar signal-processing stack efficiently. Fabricated in 40-nm CMOS, the measured 3-dB bandwidth of this SoC ranges from 30.3 to 39.7 GHz and the noise figure (NF) is 8 dB. The achieved saturated output power is higher than 14.4 dBm with a continuous modulation bandwidth of 1.8 GHz. In the vital signs monitoring experiments, the heartbeat (i.e., 75.60 bpm) and respiratory (i.e., 25.20 bpm) signals can be correctly detected. Operated with a clock of 200 MHz, the power consumption of the SoC is 920 mW.