Abstract:
Radar-based sensors have the capability of day/night all weather operation. This is the main
advantages of radar sensors over optical one. Radio frequencies also the potential to penetrate
through smoke and clouds. Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) technology is
preferable to employ and exploit because it is low-priced, lightweight and compact. Other
advantage of the FMCW technology is hidden in its continuous transmitting nature which is
used in applications like Moving Target Indication (MTI). FMCW radars play a significant
role in both military and civil applications. Airborne earth surveillance and its signal
processing is very novel field of research now-a-days.
The signal processing branch of imaging radar demands a heavy computational power and
large memory requirements. Many algorithms for generating interpretable images have been
implemented in literature previously. However they require intense computational power for
high resolution images. To transform the raw data into realistic image is very expensive job.
The purpose of this research is to develop the simulations for FMCW imaging radar,
implemented in MATLAB. For this, synthetic data generating and processing software is
developed. In first phase, for the validation of processor, a synthetic data generator for
FMCW imaging radar is developed. Synthetic data generator simulates the two-dimensional,
grayscale target image and also produces two-dimensional target reflectivity profile. In
second phase, processing software for FMCW imaging radar is implemented which processes
recorded raw data for realistic image formation. The final generated image is RDA (Range
Doppler Algorithm) processed of raw data. Proper image formation algorithms are developed
that gives finest performance. Thanks to these developed algorithms that give reasonable
resolution in range and cross-range dimension respectively. The functioning of the software
meets expected results when even operated on real-time data.
