News

We are contributing three papers to the conference European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) taking place end of March in Florence.

We congratulateHasan Iqbal on completing his doctorate on the topic "Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Imaging and Polarimetric Clutter Analysis Using Automotive Radars".

A highly-efficient calibration procedure for radar sensors enables the simultaneous storage of several measurement points by employing active radar targets. This is demonstrated by measurements in the near-field of the sensor. The results are presented by Matthias Linder in the Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation, now available in IEEE Early Access.

Paper: Highly Efficient Calibration of Antenna Arrays by Active Targets in the Near-Field

We congratulate Mario Müh on completing his doctorate on the topic "A Terahertz Sensor Platform for the Detection of African Trypanosomes".

Last summer, our research project about detection of land mines with the aid of radar sensors mounted on an UAV was presented in a TV report for the science program "nano". In this project, we collaborate with Urs Endress Foundation and Fondation suisse de déminage (FSD). The video is now available on the Youtube channel of FSD.

Video: Detecting Mines using High-Tech Drones

A new signal model for arbitrary radar array configurations and beamformers is derived by Pirmin Schöder in his new journal article. With the new model, the capabilities of flexible direction-of-arrival simulations can be extended beyond existing methods. The generation of targets for radars with different antenna configurations is presented utilizing different approaches. The article appears in Transactions onAerospace and Electronic Systems and is now available in IEEExplore Early Access.

Paper: A Unified Model of Coherent Direction-of-Arrival Simulation for Radar Target Simulators

The connection of mechanically flexible dielectric waveguides without the use of mode converters is now possible directly via an interface in a glass package. In his new journal article, Thomas Galler compares galvanically coupled and electromagnetically coupled approaches above 150 GHz. The article appears in Transactions on Microwave Theories & Techniques and is now available in IEEExplore Early Access.

Paper: MMIC-to-Dielectric Waveguide Transitions for Glass Packages Above 150 GHz

Marco Veit received the VDE-Prize for his master thesis about a tunable multilayer fishnet metamaterial lens at millimeter-wave frequencies. Congratulations!

Radar-based gesture recognition algorithms can work without a single measured sample for training! In a new journal article by Nicolai Kern, this is demonstrated by one-to-one re-simulation of a comprehensive real dataset, thus pointing out both the potential and the challenges of simulation-based data augmentation. The results are presented in the Transactions on Microwave Theories & Techniques’ special issue on AI for Microwaves, now available in Early Access.

Paper: Learning on Multistatic Simulation Data for Radar-Based Automotive Gesture Recognition

We congratulate Pirmin Schöder on receiving the EuRAD Young Engineer Prize for his paper “A Modulation-Based Target Simulator and Its Hardware Nonidealities”.

Multicopter UAVs offer unmatched flexibility, which allows for new ways for close-proximity ground-penetrating radar imaging without requiring traversable terrain. There is a large variety of applications that could benefit from these systems. In a new magazine article, Alexander Grathwohl and Michael Stelzig provide an overview of the requirements for high-quality imaging, current state-of-the-art applications and future possibilities. The system prototype is even featured on the IEEE Microwave Magazine's cover.

Paper: Taking a Look Beneath the Surface: Multicopter UAV-Based Ground-Penetrating Imaging Radars

We congratulate André Dürr on completing his doctorate on the topic of radar systems for high-resolution imaging

We are contributing seven papers and two workshops presentations to the conference taking place end of September.

A new MIMO Radar with 1728 Virtual Channels for high-resolution 4D imaging is presented by Dominik Schwarz in his new journal article. The system is composed from 12 radar MMICs, exceeding the channel count of modern automotive radars by a factor of 10, has a new multilayer PCB concept to seperate RF circuitry and antennas, and features beamwidths of 0.78° (azimuth) and 3.6° (elevation). The article is already available on IEEExplore and will be published in the Journal of Microwaves.

Paper: System Performance of a 79 GHz High-Resolution 4D Imaging MIMO Radar With 1728 Virtual Channels

The institute contributes a paper about Interference of Automotive Radars in Complex Traffic Scenarios to the conference.

Neural networks can reliably recognize real-world traffic gestures from multi-perspective radar target lists as input. Hence, the gesture recognition algorithm presented by Nicolai Kern in his article for the Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems is particularly suitable for autonomous driving in strongly scattering environments, helping vehicles to safely interact with pedestrians. The article is already available on IEEExplore Early Access.

Paper: PointNet+LSTM for Target List-based Gesture Recognition with Incoherent Radar Networks

Martin Geiger was awarded a prize for his outstanding dissertation, donated by the Ulmer Universitätsgesellschaft. Congratulations! Martin wrote his dissertation about a flexible waveguide probe for MMIC-based radar systems at 300 GHz.