The MiraCom research center studies radar-communication convergence technology, which is becoming important for future 6G communication and in high resolution imaging radar. A 60-GHz high-resolution radar-communication system has been implemented at the center; it has a phased-subarray-antenna-based hybrid-beamforming MIMO architecture. To realize this system, an 8 channel CMOS transmitter and receiver beamforming ICs capable of high-resolution beamforming were designed. A novel antenna array structure was proposed that maximizes the 2-D effective antenna aperture with perpendicular 1-D antenna arrays. OFDM radar signal processing techniques are being studied for efficient MIMO radar-communication integration. These are expected to be applied in various areas, including biometric monitoring services, indoor location-based communication services, disaster-rescue human sensing, autonomous driving of robots and automobiles, etc.
Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) System Research
Since radar and communication systems share highly similar RF hardware, ISAC has emerged as a key topic in 6G communication systems. It opens up new applications such as location-based services, environment aware communication, autonomous driving, and indoor navigation. We are working on the system model and 60 Ghz front-end IC design.
High-resolution MIMO OFDM Radar Research
A novel antenna array structure with four integrated transmitter- and receiver- beamforming ICs is proposed that maximizes the 2-D effective antenna aperture by using perpendicular 1-D antenna arrays. OFDM radar signal processing techniques are also studied for efficient MIMO radar-communication integration. The following antenna array provides less than 1 degree angular resolution.
antenna aperture is 4 times the physical antenna size and (b) ISAC using the module
Research on high resolution radar-communication hardware
Eight channel transmitter and receiver beam forming ICs are implemented; these have power amplifiers and low noise amplifiers with digital active phase shifters and power combiners. Also, a fast-hopping PLL low jitter local oscillator at 60GHz is implemented for stepped carrier OFDM radar communication.
Research on human sensing with differial radar
It is very difficult to detect human vital signals such as breath and heart beat, since the signals are usually smaller than human motion artifacts and background noise. We propose a differential radar that uses the differential beam concept to suppress motion artifacts and background noise.
