Millimeter Wave Radar Technology Principles, Applications And Future Prospects

September 19, 2024

Millimeter-wave radar is a special radar technology that uses very short wavelength electromagnetic waves. The radar system transmits electromagnetic wave signals that are blocked by objects in its transmission path and then reflected. By capturing the reflected signal, the radar system can determine the distance, speed and angle of the object.

Millimeter-wave radar transmits signals with a wavelength of millimeters. This wavelength is considered short in the electromagnetic spectrum and is one of the advantages of this technology. It is true that the size of system components (such as antennas) required to process mmWave signals is very small. Another advantage of the short wavelength is high accuracy. Millimeter-wave systems operating at frequencies of 76-81GHz (corresponding to a wavelength of about 4mm) will be able to detect movements as small as a few tenths of a millimeter.

A complete mmWave radar system includes transmit (TX) and receive (RX) radio frequency (RF) components, as well as analog components such as clocks, and digital components such as analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), microcontrollers (MCUs) and digital signal processors (DSPs). In the past, these systems have been implemented with discrete components, which increased power consumption and overall system cost. Its complexity and high frequency requirements make system design challenging. Texas Instruments (TI) has overcome these challenges and designed complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-based mmWave radar devices that integrate TX-RF and RX-RF components such as clocks, as well as digital components such as ADCs, MCUs, and hardware accelerators. Some families in TI's mmWave sensor portfolio integrate DSPs for additional signal processing.

TI devices implement a special mmWave technology called frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW). As the name implies, FMCW radars continuously transmit frequency modulated signals to measure distance as well as angle and velocity. This is different from traditional pulse radar systems that periodically transmit short pulses.