FMCW Radar 100 - Radar Imaging

Radar vs Camera Imaging

Summary

Radar elements are combined coherently to form a sparse TOI matrix.

CMOS imager are combined indepentently to form a dense TOI matrix.

Parameter

Radar imaging formulas

Camera field of view and angular resolution

FOV w/o lense

\(6843AOP_{FOV} \approx 140^o\)

\(fov \approx 180^o\)

FOV w/ lense

TBD

\(fov = 2 \cdot tan^{-1}(\frac{H}{2 \cdot f})\)

MIMO FOV w/o lense (3)

\(\theta_{FOV} = +/- arcsin(\frac{\lambda}{2d})\)

$ fov = 2 \cdot `tan^{-1}(:nbsphinx-math:frac{H}{2 cdot f}`)$

single element angular resolution w/o lense

\(\Delta \theta_1 \approx \frac{1}{L \cdot \lvert cos \theta \rvert}\)

N/A

single element angular resolution w/ lense

\(TBD\)

\(fov = 2 \cdot tan^{-1}(\frac{u}{2 \cdot f})\)

sensing element size

\(\approx \lambda \approx 5mm\)

1 to 10 \(\mu\)m *

N (number sensing element)

6843 or 2243: 12

M*2243: \(N = 12*4^{M-1} \implies M>8 \iff N>10^6\)

VGA (~300k) up to MPix

array angular resolution (1)

\(\Delta \theta_N \approx \frac{1}{N \cdot \lvert cos \theta \rvert}\), with N number element in azimuth or elevation

\(fov = 2 \cdot tan^{-1}(\frac{u}{2 \cdot f})\)

array angular resolution (2)

\(\Delta \theta_N \approx \frac{\lambda}{N \cdot d \cdot \lvert cos \theta \rvert}\), with N number element in azimuth or elevation

$ fov = 2 \cdot `tan^{-1}(:nbsphinx-math:frac{u}{2 cdot f}`)$

sensor size

\(\approx \lambda ^2 * 4 \approx 10mm \cdot 10mm\) or $ 100mm^2 *4^{M-1}$

~1 mm x 1mm

TX Beam Forming angle width

\(\theta_{width} = \frac{sin(N\pi d_x (s-s_0)/\lambda_0)}{N sin(\pi d_x (s-s_0)/\lambda_0)}\) (Eq 1.57 p17 [1])

N/A

Depth of field

N/A

\(\approx \frac{2D^2FC}{f^2}\)

raw data processing

Range, CFAR, AoA (LFB, CAPON), Doppler

Demosaic, YUV, Gamma, Sharpnes, color LPF, ALC, …

temporal resolution

?10ms / frame ?

60fps ~ 16ms/frame

where:

  • C is the circle of confusion (the diameter of which is expressed in m)

  • D is distance to TOI (m)

  • f is the focal of the lense (\(m^{-1}\))

  • F is the lense f number (unit-less)

  • H is the sensor size:

    • H = N * u

    • N is the number of sensors

    • u is the sensor size

(1), (2), (3) apperture is a function of N*d on angular resolution where λ is the wavelength of the radar signal and d is the spatial spacing between the channels. The field of view (FOV, maximum unambiguous angle without grating lobes) can be calculated by θFOV so that a diminished FOV of (< 180◦) can be achieved by a spacing of λ/2 or below

Sources:
[1] Robert J. Mailloux - Phased Array Antenna Handbook-Artech House (2005)

Notes:

radar angular resolution [4.] Section 6.6.5

for more on beyond simple pinhole here fig 5

camera angular resolution limited by Airy disk or diffraction where

  • C: circle of confusion
    \(sin \theta \approx 1.22 \frac{\lambda}{d}\)
  • pixel sensor size source > Pixel size ranges from 1.1 microns in the smallest smartphone sensor, to 8.4 microns in a Full-Frame sensor. As an example, the 8 megapixel sensor above has a resolution of 3,264 x 2,448 pixels, with 327,184 pixels in an area just 1mm x 1mm in size

Considerations on coherent sampling

aka Spatial filtering

MiMoSpatialSampling.png

From the above we can see the clear analogy FIR filtering in time domain and spatial filtering by the antenna array.

A FIR filter is defined by

\(y_F (t) = \sum_{k=0}^{m-1}h_ku(t-k)\triangleq h*y(t)\) (6.3.4)

Where:

  • \(h_k\) are the filter weights

  • u(t) is the input to the filter

Similarly for the spatial filter

\(y_F (t) = \lbrack h*a(\theta) \rbrack \cdot s(t)\)

Where \(a(\theta) = \lbrack 1 e^{j2π·d sin \theta/λ} e^{j2π·2\cdot d sin \theta/λ} e^{j2π·3\cdot d sin \theta/λ} .. e^{j2π·N\cdot d sin \theta/λ} \rbrack\)

Which clearly shows that the spatial filter can be selecte to enhance (attenuate) the signals coming from a given direction \(\theta\) by making \(h * a(\theta)\) large (or small)

The CAPON DOA are the locations of the largest peaks of:

\(\frac{1}{a(\theta) R^{-1} a(\theta)}\) (6.3.26)

AoA Compute Complexity

Algorithm

Setup Operations

Setup Operations per Solution

Operations per θ Hypothesis

# Operations per θ Hypothesis

PSBF

N/A

N/A

2 matrix mult

42

CAPON

1 Matrix inversion

216

2 matrix mult2, 1 div

43

MUSIC

1 SVD, 1 Matrix mult, 1 threshold

402

2 matrix mult2, 1 div

43

MLE

N/A

N/A

N/A

630-6300*

In our experiments, MUSIC/ESPRIT has fairly good performance when the number of ‘virtual antennas’ is high (say 40). For small number of antennas (say 4) we haven’t seen good performance. source: E2E

[1.] pp35

CAPON

Capon DOA estimation has been empirically found to possess superior performance as compared with beamforming. source [4 p 300]

\(E {|y_F (t) |^2 } = h* R h\) (5.4.3) or (6.3.8)

Which is the classical formula for the Energy output of a linear filter. Where:

  • E: energy output of the linear filter

  • h: filter

  • R: the covariance matrix

Which for spatial filter can be rewritten as :

\(E {|y_F (t) |^2 } = a^*(\theta) \cdot R \cdot a(\theta)\) (Eq. [4.] 5.4.3)

Given that the covariance matrix R cannot be exactly determined, it can be estimated by

\(\hat R = \frac{ \sum_{t=1}^{N} y(t) \cdot y^*(t) }{N}\)

From which, the problem defined by CAPON is 1969 is :

\(\underset{h}{min} (h*Rh)\) subject to \(h^*a(\theta) =1\) (Eq. [4.]6.3.23)

The solution to which is proven in 5.4 and is

\(h = \frac{R^{-1}a(\theta)}{a^*(\theta)R^{-1}a(\theta)}\) (Eq. [4.]6.3.24)

which when inserted in the output power formula (Eq. [4.]6.3.8)

\(E \left\{ \lvert y_F (t) \rvert ^2 \right\} = \frac{1}{a^*(\theta)R^{-1}a(\theta)}\)

From which we can derive that the CAPON DOA estimates are the locations of the largest peaks for the function

\(\frac{1}{a^*(\theta)R^{-1}a(\theta)}\) (Eq. [4.] 6.3.26)

Sensing elements

Radar Antenna patch element

series feed vs coroporate feed

  1. linear feed vs b. corporate feed patch antenna

image.png 2 series feed antenna with elements of different size (but each antenna is the same)

Radar Array

Physical array

image.png

Source E2E `link <>`__

image.png

source E2E

Virtual array

image.png

Imaging sensor

While patch antenna for visible light is an active topic of research not industrial sensor uses this principle today

image.png

REFERENCES

1. Performance Analysis of Angle of Arrival Algorithms Applied to Radiofrequency Interference Direction Finding

2. ISP block diagram

3. simple introduction to BF as LTI filters

  1. SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF SIGNALS - Petre Stoica

\[\theta = sin^{-1} (\frac{\omega \cdot \lambda}{2 \cdot \pi \cdot d})\]

maximum field of view for \(d = \frac{\lambda}{2}\)

\[\theta = sin^{-1} (\frac{\omega }{\pi })\]