A novel OFDM-based Radar and Communication System Design using Digital IQ-Modulation and 52 GS/s Direct-RF Data Converter

Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based radars require a high bandwidth for the digital-to-analog (DAC) and analog-to-digital (ADC) converters. Recent advancements in converter designs have pushed the available sampling speed well above 50 GS/s. This allows OFDM-based radar waveforms with a high bandwidth to be sampled directly to the carrier frequency, reducing the number of building blocks in the transceiver chain. This paper proposes a CMOS based radar and communication transceiver system design which achieves a range resolution of 10 cm and a velocity resolution of 0.55 m/s. Utilizing digital I/Q mixing and directly sampling a 1.52 GHz bandwidth OFDM-based radar signal halves the number of required data converters and can significantly reduce the I/Q imbalance.