Consumer radar: Opportunities and challenges

Modern semiconductor technology, such as small geometry CMOS, is providing the opportunity to build very small and very low cost single chip radar systems operating at millimeter wave frequencies. Such tiny radar systems open up a vast range of new applications from automotive radar, safety helmet radar, bicycle radar, health monitoring radar, robot guidance radar, micro-UAV surveillance radar, and a host of other applications. Co-operative networks of these tiny radars also constitute an exciting possibility. Considerable progress has been made in designing and building millimeter wave CMOS radar systems and addressing the technology limitations imposed by CMOS. However many challenges remain relating to interference mitigation when there exist large numbers of small radars operating in close spacial and frequency proximity to each other. Waveform diversity and cognitive radar techniques assist in addressing these challenges. This talk will discuss current work on CMOS radar hardware, signal processing, waveform scheduling and the idea of opportunistic radar. Further progress on approaches to determining fundamental performance limitations of tiny radar systems is currently underway.