An FPGA-Based Signal Processor for FMCW Doppler Radar and Spectroscopy

We report on the design and development of a field programmable gate array (FPGA)-based radar and spectrometer signal processor. It leverages an efficient implementation of a fixed-point frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) Doppler radar algorithm and has been demonstrated in a short-range W-band radar system developed for mapping plume and jet phenomena in the solar system. The signal processor also performs Fourier transform-based spectroscopy with a resolution, bandwidth, and averaging time appropriate for millimeter- and submillimeter-wave passive remote sensing in space. With a dc power consumption totaling only 3 W, the processor helps make the Doppler radar and spectrometer instrument well-suited for spaceborne, airborne, or portable platforms. Here, we describe the fixed-point implementation of the radar and spectrometer algorithm, emphasizing its computational efficiency for low resource utilization, and provide examples of Doppler radar sensing of rain and spectrometer sensitivity to hot and cold blackbody loads.