Real-time data acquisition and signal processing of a multistatic mm-wave radar system

In this paper, we report on the challenging real-time data acquisition and signal processing of a multistatic 100 GHz millimeter-wave radar system with 32 Tx- and 32 Rx-elements. With four ACQ216CPCI Digitizer Boards it is possible to sample 32 channels simultaneously with 14-bit resolution at a maximum sampling rate of 25 MSPS. Moreover, data pre-processing in form of a matched filter is performed on hardware level in real-time to reduce the amount of data that must be transferred to the PC which executes the backprojection algorithm for 3D-imaging.