USRP Implementation of a High Resolution FMCW Radar Using a Stepped Chirp Waveform

We present a Software Defined Radio (SDR) implementation of a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) Radar which uses much larger bandwidth than the SDR RF bandwidth in order to increase radar resolution. It is based on the Stepped Frequency principle applied across the RF frequency range, where the baseband signal is an FMCW signal, i.e. a linear chirp, that modulates a number of RF stepped frequencies. The resulting stepped chirp radar uses a much larger bandwidth, and, thus, has a much higher resolution. We perform field experiments with targets in a laboratory setup. The targets are detected with high accuracy in the range variable. The potential application could be a Ground Penetrating Radar for detecting small and shallow targets buried under the ground.