Development of Short-Range Ground Surveillance

Radar for Moving Target Detection

Eugin Hyun Young-Seok Jin Yeounghwan Ju Jong-Hun Lee

ART (Advanced Radar
Technology) Lab.,
Division of IoT & Robotics
Convergence Research,
DGIST, Korea
braham@dgist.ac.kr
(Primary author)
ART (Advanced Radar
Technology) Lab.,
Division of IoT & Robotics
Convergence Research,
DGIST, Korea
ysjin@dgist.ac.kr
ART (Advanced Radar ART (Advanced Radar
Technology) Lab., Technology) Lab.,
Division of IoT & Robotics Division of IoT & Robotics
Convergence Research, Convergence Research,
DGIST, Korea DGIST, Korea
yhju@dgist.ac.kr jhlee@dgist.ac.kr
(Corresponding Author)

AbstractIn this paper, we proposed a short-range ground In this paper, we report the development of 24GHz FMCW
surveillance FMCW (Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave) ground surveillance radar system designed to detect moving
radar. For this work, we employed a 2D-FFT algorithm to detect targets at short range.
moving targets, and a windowing scheme to reduce the distortion
generated by frequency transition. Moreover, we designed a
moving target finding method to extract moving targets from the II. FAST-RAMP BASED FMCW RADAR
remaining distortions. We developed a 24GHz FMCW radar
system comprised of front-end and back-end modules. A newly In previous work [2], the basic concept of fast-ramp based
designed algorithm was implemented in a micro-processor of the FMCW radar was introduced in detail, with illustrations such
back-end module. When we tested the function of the developed as Figure 1. Here, Figure 1(a) represents the signal shape in the
radar system in the field, the range and velocity profiles of a frequency-time domain. The shape of the frequency sweep is
moving car occupying the detection zone were extracted without saw-toothed, with the solid line representing the transmitted
distortion. signal and the dotted line representing the received signal.
Index TermsRadar, Surveillance Radar, Moving Target,
Figure 1(b) presents a received beat-signal from a single target.
Detection. The range information can be expressed as a frequency
spectrum of each beat-signal and the Doppler-frequency
appears as phase information over the all ramps in slow time
I. INTRODUCTION
domain.
In recent years, FMCW (Frequency Modulation
Continuous Wave) radar has been used for a variety of vehicle
applications including such as automotive, security, and
surveillance [1-2].
FMCW radar is effective, but it possesses ambiguities
regarding separation of the ranges and velocities of multiple
simultaneous targets. In order to resolve them, a fast-ramp
based FMCW radar is herein proposed. In this radar, based on
2D-FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) processing, a 2D range-
Doppler map is completed and the target information is
extracted from it [2-5].
Generally, in this method, a fast-ramp with saw-tooth
frequency modulation shape is used, so an unwanted signal
occurs in the analogue electronics in the received part. That is,
when the maximum carrier frequency is transited to the lowest
frequency at the end of each ramp period, sudden sharp peaks
appears in the signal power. This powerful signal not only
Fig. 1. Basic concept of the ramp-sequence based FMCW radar: (a)
appears in near range, but also spreads over the entire spectral Transmitted signal and received signal in the frequency-time domain, and (b)
range. Particularly, in near range, because the distortion is also Beat-signal for a single moving target in the slow time domain. B (lower left
spread over Doppler spectrum, it is very difficult to distinguish side) is the bandwidth, PRI is the pulse repetition interval, and t is the two-
the unwanted signal and reflections from the real target, using way delay time of the received signal reflected from a single target.
Doppler information [6-7].

978-1-4673-7297-8/15/$31.00 2015
c IEEE 692
 Using this method, 2D-FFT processing is used to extract
the 2D range and velocity profiles. With this approach, because
the clutter is diminished in all range-bins with a zero Doppler,
the clutter, including stationary targets, can easily be
suppressed and moving targets can easily be distinguished.
However, because the fast-ramp with saw-tooth frequency
modulation shape is used for FMCW generation, an unwanted
signal occurs in the receiver. That is, the sharp peaks appear in
the signal power in transition time from maximum carrier
frequency to the lowest frequency, such as figure 2.
This powerful signal not only appeared in near range, but
also spreads over the entire range spectrum. Especially, in near
range, since the distortion is also spread over Doppler spectrum,
it is very difficult to distinguish the unwanted signal and real
target using Doppler information [6-7].
9 Finally, to compare the selected moving target cells
with the threshold, it is determined whether each
cell is target or not, by the thresholding function.
Generally, in the 2D range-Doppler map, the number of
targets in one Doppler spectrum is low in practical cases [5].
Thus, even though windowing is effective method for
resolving the distortion, the unwanted signal in near range dose
not completely disappear. Moreover, this signal still spreads in
adjacent Doppler directions from the zero-Doppler point.
This situation produces ghost moving targets, which
reduces radar performance. Thus, in this work, after
distinguishing the ghost targets and the real moving targets, the
moving targets are only fed into the CFAR detector. The role is
processed in a moving target finding function.

Fig. 2. Transmitted signal on frequency time domain and the measured power
of the received beat signal.

III. NEWLY DEVELOPED RADAR SYSTEM

Figure 3 shows the developed detection algorithm scheme
comprising the following three steps:
G Range processing
9 In order to cancel distortion produced by frequency
transition, it is necessary to employ a weighting
function before FFT. Thus, in work, a Hamming
window in the sample index direction is applied.
9 A Fourier transform is conducted with samples for
one ramp and then it is repeated for all ramps.
9 After range processing, the complex data are stored
in the memory with ramp number by range bin
index.
G Doppler processing
9 In the same fashion, a Chebyshev window is used in
the ramp index before FFT. Fig. 3. 2D-FFT based range-Doppler processing algorithm scheme
9 The Doppler frequency spectrum is commutated
with samples of the same range-bin over ramps. The developed 24GHz FMCW radar system is composed of
9 The complex data is saved to memory with Doppler a FEM (Front-End module) and BEM (Back-End Module).
bin index by range bin index. The FEM also includes a transceiver and an antenna with a
G Detection processing wide FOV (Field Of View). The transceiver design was based
9 The 2D range-Doppler map with magnitude is first on PLL (Phase Loop Lock) and VCO (Voltage Control
completed using root-square computation. Oscillator) to generate FMCW, as shown in Figure 4 (a).
9 We proposed the moving target finding function, to Figure 4 (a) also shows the BEM, composed of the micro-
select the cells regarded as the moving target from processor and peripheral devices. A Texas Instruments
the 2D range-Doppler map before thresholding. TMS320F device with 32 bit floating point core was used to
implement the moving target detection algorithms. The

2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR) 693

TMS320F is very tiny controller with internal ADC (Analog
Digital Converter), flash memory, and cache. The target
detection results are transferred to a PC via a CAN (Controller
Area Network) interface.
The developed 24GHz FMCW radar system specifications
and signal processing parameters are presented in Table I.

TABLE I. RADAR SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS

Specification Value
Center frequency (GHz) 24
Bandwidth (MHz) 200 Fig. 5. Measurement environment for short-range detection radar
Pulse repetition time (us) 40
Ramp size in one frame 32
ADC sampling rate (MHz) 1
Sample size in a single ramp 40

Fig. 6. Measured range-Doppler maps: (a) without windowing, (b) with

windowing, (c) with windowing and moving target finding
Fig. 4. Block diagram of the FEM and BEM of the developed 24GH FMCW
radar Figure 7 shows the detection results and range profiles for
three cases. Here, descriptions for cases (a)-(c) are explained in
IV. MEASUREMENT RESULTS Table II.

To test the performance of the developed short-range radar TABLE II. RADAR SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS
in the field, we set up a measurement environment as shown in
Cases Windowing Moving target finding
Figure 5. A real single car passed through the detection zone
with an average velocity of less than 30 km/h. The radar was (a) Not used Not used
installed near the road to detect moving cars occupying the (b) Applying windowing Not used
detection zone. (c) Applying windowing Applying proposed method
Figure 6 shows the measured range-Doppler maps. Figure
6(a) and 6(b) present the results in the cases with and without Figure 7(a) presents the results in the cases with and
applying window functions. without applying window functions. Figure 7(c) is the result in
In the typical method, the magnitude of the moving target is the case with moving target finding together with windowing.
similar to a side-lobe of high distortion. With the 2D range- From these results, we know that the newly developed radar
Doppler map applying windows, the side-lobe of distortion is system cancels most of the distortion and effectively detect
considerably suppressed. moving targets.
However, even though windowing is an effective method
for resolving the distortion, we can see that the unwanted
signal in near range did not completely disappear.

694 2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)

 V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we proposed a design for short-range ground
surveillance radar to detect moving targets. To cancel the
unwanted distortion signal, we employed window functions
before FFT processing. Moreover, a new moving target
finding method was used before thresholding in order to
extract moving targets from the remaining distortions.
A newly developed target detection processing scheme was
implemented within a micro-processor and test using the new
24GHz FMCW radar transceiver and antennas.
According to the experimental results on a real road, we can
conclude that new system is able to effectively detect a
moving car.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
(a)
This work was supported by the DGIST R&D Program of
the Ministry of Science, ICT and Technology of Korea (15-RS-
01).
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(c)
Fig. 7. Detection results and range profiles for case (a)-(c)

2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR) 695