Millimeter Wave Receiver Front End for Automotive Radar Application

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to study millimeter wave receivers front end used for automotive radar applications. The phased array systems are founded to be the most suitable systems for radar application due to its ability of electronic scanning and steering. The FCC regulations for automotive short range radar (SRR) and long range radar (LRR) are chosen. A complete radar analysis using the radar equation for the FCC SRR and LRR standards are carried out with determination of each receiver front end speci cations. Di erent architectures of phased array systems for radar application are stud- ied. A new concurrent dual-band phased array receiver architecture for down- converting the FCC automotive short and long range radar bands located at 25.5 GHz and 76.5 GHz is proposed. A new dual-band antenna array is pro- posed. In addition, a new concurrent down-conversion receiver is proposed xi xii including a dual-band low noise ampli er (DB-LNA) and a dual-band mixer (DB-mixer) using 65 nm CMOS technology. The front end utilizes a new dual-band phased array receiver based on hybrid Weaver Hartley architecture. Mathematical formulation, including the e ect of mismatch for the proposed architecture is provided. A behavioral modeling for the complete RF front-end with the overall radar system is presented, and the e ect of noise, mismatch, and non-linearity are examined on the overall radar performance. The behavioral model simulation results show that to achieve a probability of detection of 0.9 and probability of false alarm of 10􀀀4, an RF front-end module with 5.5 dB and 7.5 dB NF and an LNA with an IIP3 of -10 dBm are required in the phased array receiver for the 25.5 GHz band and 76.5 GHz band, respectively.