Technologies for calibrating radars and tracking space objects. Some of such technologies enable a technique for calibrating a radar based on using -A- an elemental antenna (308), which can be embedded on a housing hosting a set of antenna elements, or -B- an antenna (146) mounted to a reflector. Some of such technologies enable a radar site containing a first 1D phased array (112) and a second 1D phased array (112), where the first 1D phased array sends a set of signals and receives a set of reflections based on the set of signals, and the second 1D phased array receives the set of reflections.

The present disclosure relates to a radar device, including a transmitter circuit configured to generate an RF oscillator signal and to transmit an RF fault detection signal based on the RF oscillator signal, a receiver circuit configured to receive an RF reception signal based on the RF fault detection signal and to mix the RF reception signal with the RF oscillator signal in order to obtain a down-converted reception signal, and a fault detection circuit configured to detect a hardware fault of the radar device based on a phase of the down-converted reception signal.

A radar system for motor vehicles, with a plurality of transmit/receive units arranged on separate installation supports for installation at various locations in the motor vehicle, an evaluation system for evaluating the radar signals received on a plurality of channels in a plurality of processing steps, a first processing step delivering a digital time signal for each channel, which digital time signal represents the received radar signal, and a final processing step delivering as the result location data for individual radar objects and at least the final processing step being implemented for the plurality of transmit/receive units in a central evaluation unit with which the transmit/receive units in each case communicate via a raw data interface. The each of raw data interfaces has a serializer, which is configured to transfer raw data from the plurality of channels of the transmit/receive unit in question serially to the central evaluation unit.

An example radar device includes an antenna system, a transmitter having an input, and an output coupled to an input of the antenna system, the transmitter having modulation circuitry to provide frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) signals for transmission by the antenna system; a receive signal processing chain; and a digital front-end. The receive signal processing chain includes an input coupled to an output of the antenna system, and is configured to receive radar reflection signals, process the radar reflected signals to generate an intermediate frequency (IF) baseband signal, and digitize the IF baseband signal to generate digital samples of the IF baseband signal. The digital front-end has an input to receive the digital samples of the IF baseband signal and to phase-shift the digital samples in response to a calibration signal.

A method of measuring phase noise (PN). A PLL frequency synthesizer is provided including a first phase frequency detector (PFD) receiving a reference frequency signal coupled to a first charge pump (CP) coupled to a VCO having an output fedback to the first PFD through a feedback divider that provides a divided frequency signal to the first PFD which outputs an error signal, and PN measurement circuitry including a replica CP coupled to an output of a second PFD or the first PFD. The error signal is received at the replica CP or the divided and reference frequency signal are received at the second PFD, wherein the replica CP outputs a scaled phase error current which is current-to-voltage converted and amplified to provide an amplified phase error voltage, and digitized to provide a digital phase error signal. The digital phase error signal is frequency analyzed to generate a PN measurement.

The invention describes a method for reducing interference effects in a radar system, which has at least two transceiver units (S1, S2), which are in particular spatially separated from one another, wherein the method comprises the following steps: —a transmission step (VS1), in which a first transmission signal (sigTX1) of the first transceiver unit (S1) is sent and received to and by a second transceiver unit (S2) and a second transmission signal (sigTX2) of the second transceiver unit (S2) is sent and received to and by the first transceiver unit (S1) via a radio channel (T), wherein the transmission signals (sigTX1, sigTX2) are modulated according to an orthogonal frequency multiplex method; and—a pre-correction step (VS2), in which correction values (γ1, γn, γ2) are determined from the received transmission signals (sigTX1, sigTX2) and in particular are exchanged between the transceiver stations (S1, S2), wherein the received transmission signals (sigRX1, sigRX2) are postprocessed on the basis of the correction values (γ1, γn, γ2), so that influences of interference variables, in particular of phase noise and/or a time offset and/or unknown initial phase positions, are reduced.

Radar System The disclosure relates to a radar system having multiple radar transceiver modules, in which each module has a clock signal that is synchronised with a clock signal generated by a leader transceiver module. Example embodiments include a radar system (400) comprising a plurality of radar transceiver modules (401, 402) mounted to a common PCB (404), the plurality of radar transceiver modules comprising a leader module (401) and one or more follower modules (402), the leader module (401) comprising a first oscillator (403) configured to provide a first clock signal at a first frequency to each follower module (402), each of the leader and follower modules comprising a phase locked loop, PLL, clock signal generator (300), the PLL clock signal generator (300) comprising a divide by n clock divider (304) arranged to output 2n phase shifted clock signals (314) at a third frequency and a multiplexer (306) connected to receive the 2n phase shifted clock signals from the divide by n clock divider (304) and output a third clock signal (308) selected by an input phase select signal (307).

A method for calibrating two receiving units of a radar sensor that includes an array of receiving antennas formed by two sub-arrays and an evaluation unit, which is designed to carry out an angle estimation for located radar targets based on phase differences between the signals received by the receiving antennas, each receiving unit including parallel reception paths for the signals of the receiving antennas of one of the sub-arrays. The method includes: analyzing the received signals and deciding whether a multi-target scenario or a single-target scenario is present, in the case of a single-target scenario, measuring phases of the signals received in the sub-arrays and calculating a phase offset between the two sub-arrays, and calibrating the phases in the two receiving units based on the calculated offset.

Technologies for calibrating radars and tracking space objects. Some of such technologies enable a technique for calibrating a radar based on using -A- an elemental antenna (308), which can be embedded on a housing hosting a set of antenna elements, or -B- an antenna (146) mounted to a reflector. Some of such technologies enable a radar site containing a first 1D phased array (112) and a second 1D phased array (112), where the first 1D phased array sends a set of signals and receives a set of reflections based on the set of signals, and the second 1D phased array receives the set of reflections.

Example embodiments relate to transmitter-receiver leakage suppression in integrated radar systems. One embodiment includes a front-end for a radar system. The front-end includes a transmit path that includes a power amplifier and a transmit antenna. The transmit path is configured to transmit a transmit signal. The front-end also includes a receive path that includes a receive antenna and a low-noise amplifier. The receive path is configured to receive at least a leakage from the transmit path. The receive path is configured to generate an amplified signal of the leakage. Further, the front-end also includes a reference path. In addition, the front-end includes a compensation unit in the reference path. The compensation unit is configured to generate compensation for a leakage path between the transmit path and the receive path. The compensation unit is configured to apply the generated compensation to the reference signal to generate a compensated reference signal.