A Study on Estimation of a Beat Spectrum in a FMCW Radar

Recently, a FMCW radar is used for the various purposes in the short range detection and tracking of targets. The main advantages of a FMCWradar are the comparative simplicity of implementation and the low peak power transmission characterizing the very low probability of signal interception. Since it uses the frequency modulated continuous wave for transmission and demodulation, the received beat frequency represents the range and Doppler information of targets. Detection and extraction of useful information from targets are performed in this beat frequency domain. Therefore, the resolution and accuracy in the estimation of a beat spectrum are very important. However, using the conventional FFT estimation method, the high resolution spectrum estimation with a low sidelobe level is not possible if the acquisition time is very short in receiving target echoes. This kind of problems deteriorates the detection performance of adjacent targets having the large magnitude differences in return echoes and also degrades the reliability of the extracted information. Therefore, in this paper, the model parameter estimation methods such as autoregressive and eigenvector spectrum estimation are applied to mitigate these problems. Also, simulation results are compared and analyzed for further improvement.