A Six-Port Radar System for Precise Distance Measurements and Vibration Monitoring in Industrial Environments

The Six-Port receiver has been subject of several investigations in the last years especially for radar applications in different areas, from accurate contactless vibration analysis, through automotive radar calibration to remote breath and heartbeat monitoring. The advantages of the Six-Port receiver such as excellent phase discrimination, trivial signal processing and low circuit complexity as well as cost, are the features that lead the radar industry to further development of this technology. A joint project involving the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and InnoSenT GmbH (Innovative Sensor Technology), led to the development of a highly accurate, compact and versatile Six-Port radar module aiming at a reliable high-integration of all subcomponents such as antenna, Six-Port front-end, baseband circuitry and digital signal processing.