Effect of Phase Noise in FMCW and PMCW Radar Systems for Breast Cancer Detection

In this paper the effect of local oscillator (LO) phase noise on the performance of FMCW and PMCW radar systems for breast cancer detection is examined. For this purpose, a complete system level simulation based on the workflow shown in Fig. 1 is carried out. The special feature of this system level design approach is that in the system simulation a complete setup with transmitting and receiving antenna, skin, fat and tumorous tissues is simulated using a 3D electromagnetic (EM) field solver. As a result, the system simulation also takes into account effects such as the near-field characteristics of the antennas that are not included in classic approaches. To investigate the influence of phase noise, a noisy LO signal is used as the input for the system simulation. This allows comparison of the results when using a perfect LO signal or a noisy LO signal. The system simulation is carried out for a FMCW radar system operating from 14 to 27 GHz and a PMCW radar system at 20 GHz. To the authors best knowledge this is the first statistical approach to model phase noise in the time domain for FMCW and PMCW radar systems.