Development Cascadable MIMO Radar Frontend with Integrated Antennas for Drone Detection

Despite a limited number of transmitter and receiver channels, colocated MIMO radars enable angular resolution that is comparable with fully populated phase array radar modules. Due to the reduced number of channels, MIMO radar systems can be manufactured more cost-effectively than comparable fully populated phase array systems. These properties make such radar systems interesting for area-wide surveillance of drones. Within the state of the art of MIMO radar systems there are limitations to achieve similar angular resolutions in horizontal and simultaneous in vertical plane. The reason is the required degree of integration, because typically the distance between the transmitter and receiver antennas is half the wavelength (at 79 GHz approx. 1.9 mm). This creates various challenges for the selection of the packaging technology, which in the past had to be solved anew for each new application. In this publication a functional radar front end with integrated antennas will be presented, which can be modularly interconnected depending on the specific application. For this reason, a novel MIMO concept is proposed, which on the one hand enables the cascading of several modules and at the same time realizes an improvement of the angular resolution in the horizontal as well as vertical plane depending on the arrangement The development is shown on the example of drone detection in an urban environment.