A 4T4R Code-Domain UWB Radar with Fully Analog Multi-Lag Correlators and Pre-Correlation Averaging

This work presents a fully-integrated, 16-VRX monostatic radar with four transmitters, four receivers, and analog I/Q correlators in a 22 nm SOI CMOS for indoor sensing and simultaneous multi-user operation. The radar operates from 4.5 to 9 GHz with a 1 GHz modulation frequency. The high-speed ADC and memory requirements were reduced by 50x using the proposed pre-correlation averaging and an analog multi-lag I/Q correlator. The prototype delivers 9.1 dBm peak power at 6 GHz, achieving a >3.5 m range, range resolution of 5.6cm, RMS range error of 1.8cm and +/-30 degrees field of view in azimuth and elevation with 1.5 degrees angular error. The 16-VRX radar consumes 1.5 uJ/frame (i.e., 94 nJ/channel/frame), representing a state-of-the-art energy efficiency for a UWB MIMO radar system.