A 60 GHz Hybrid FMCW-Doppler Radar for Vibration Detection with a Robust I/Q Calibration Method

In the field of noncontact sensing, both the continuous-wave (CW) Doppler radar and the frequency-modulated CW (FMCW) radar have their own superiorities. A combination of these two radar modes would be a suitable choice to accommodate various application scenarios. This article presents a 60-GHz hybrid FMCW-Doppler radar transceiver fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process. An on-chip frequency quadrupler driven by a 15-GHz external signal source is utilized for the 60-GHz hybrid waveform generation. Based on the hybrid operating modes, a robust I/Q imbalance calibration method is also proposed. Specifically, in the Doppler radar mode, the imbalance factors are extracted by evaluating the quadrature beat signals during the FMCW period, and then the interferometry signals are calibrated to improve the detection performance. Unlike the trajectory-based ellipse-fitting method, the accuracy of the estimated imbalance factor is independent of the target displacement. Compared with the test-signal-based imbalance factors extraction ahead of the target detection, the real-time extraction during the target detection is more efficient and can also mitigate the estimation errors caused by environmental variations. With the proposed hybrid radar system and the I/Q calibration method, an 80-mm linear displacement is recovered with a 0.016-mm root mean square error (RMSE), and a periodic vibration with a 1- mu m amplitude is detected with a 16.4-dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Multiple-target detection is also performed in the FMCW radar mode, and the vibration trajectories are recovered accurately.