Measurement of the rotational speed of industrial wind turbine blades using a low cost 24GHz Doppler radar

The 24 GHz Doppler radar is widely used in various industrial sites to implement a measurement system for the rotational speed of wind turbine blades at a low cost. In this study, a method for measuring the rotational speed of industrial wind turbine blades using a 24 GHz Doppler radar was proposed. Synthetic and measurement data were used to verify the accuracy of the proposed algorithm. The output power (EIRP) of the radar is 19 dBm, the IF-amplifier gain is 40 dB, the 3 dB beam width is 33 degrees, the antenna gain is 15 dBi, and the time sampling rate is 40 ksps. The measured target is an industrial wind turbine with an output of 1,650 kW, a diameter of 82 m, and a rated rotation speed of 14.4 rpm. Experimental results show that the proposed method accurately estimates the rotational speed from both composite and measurement data.