Advanced radar for autonomous vehicles and degraded visual environments

The increasing publicity behind self-driving cars and other public transport gives rise to, amongst other things, the need for new kinds of sensors that have long range, high resolution and provide the basic data to enable discrimination between different types of objects both moving or stationary. In addition, aircraft such as helicopters which are expected to operate in dangerous and normally inaccessible locations also require highly sophisticated sensors. This paper describes a new kind of millimetre wave all weather radar that is small, light, has long range and very high resolution. It uses electronic scanning, monopulse signal processing and IQ mixing to enable multi-target detection. The radar employs a new chipset designed on 4 mil GaAs PHEMT process with Rotman lenses based on lightweight PTFE/ceramic laminates. The complete front end offers good range, excellent RCS performance and would be applicable to both automotive or airborne applications.