Low-Power Analog Correlator Based Code-Domain UWB MIMO Radar for Human Sensing and Tracking

This paper presents a code-domain ultra-wideband (UWB) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar system using a fully-analog correlator integrated circuit (IC) for radar processing. The analog correlator IC eliminates the need for high-speed ADCs and digital memory by performing the required correlations directly on the baseband samples. The system features 4 transmit antennas and 4 receive antennas, resulting in a 16-element virtual antenna array operating at 6.75~GHz. The CMOS analog correlator performs a 1024 length correlation across 40 lags at a sampling rate of 1~GS/s, enabling a range resolution of 15~cm. We validate the system in real-time tracking of human movement and vitals which were captured at a frame rate of 20~Hz and processed in the spatial, angular, and Doppler frames. These results demonstrate the efficacy of combining analog correlators with MIMO systems for low-power medical radar applications.