Multiple-Input Multiple-Output-Beam Mixing Radar for Fast Sweeping Applications

This paper demonstrates a new concept for high-frame-rate mixing radar application. This radar consists of two transmitters and one receiver. By using Multiple-Input Multiple-Output-Beam concept, the output power of the transmitters can focus on individual 4 beam directions simultaneously and provide sufficient power for the transponder to perform mixing function. In the receiver, a digital beamforming technique is used to to perform a sweep in one data acquisition. For the verification, a 9.3/9.5 GHz mixing radar is built and tested. In the indoor testing, this radar can achieve 22 frames per second. Compared to the published radar for small species tracking, this radar has the highest frame rate and is expected to be able to capture the transient instant flight trajectory of bees.