Smoothed Phase-Coded FMCW: Waveform Properties and Transceiver Architecture

Abstract: Smoothed phase-coded frequency modulated continuous waveform (SPC-FMCW), which is aimed to improve the coexistence of multiple radars operating within the same frequency bandwidth, is studied, and the receiving strategy with a low ADC sampling requirement is investigated. The Gaussian filter is applied to obtain smooth waveform phase transitions, and then quadratic phase lag compensation is performed before waveform transmission to enhance decoding. The proposed waveform is examined in different domains, and its waveform properties are analysed theoretically and demonstrated experimentally. Both simulation and experimental results show that the introduced waveform with the investigated processing steps helps combine all advantages of the FMCW waveform, including hardware simplicity and small operational bandwidth of the receiver, with the advantages of phase coding.