UWB Radar for Low-Power Applications: From Indoor to In-Cabin Sensing

UWB radar is rapidly gaining traction, particularly with its integration into the upcoming IEEE 802.15.4ab standard. Leveraging its relatively low carrier frequency (compared to mm-wave radar) along with wide allocated bandwidth, UWB radar enables precise sensing capabilities at low power. This is leading to UWB radar’s increased adoption in critical use cases such as indoor presence and vital-sign monitoring, as well as in-cabin child presence detection. In this presentation, we provide an overview of key UWB radar technologies, including FMCW, direct sampling, and impulse radio-based approaches. We also highlight essential Analog Front-End (AFE) techniques that support these architectures, and present examples of state-of-the-art UWB transceivers (TRXs) that illustrate current design trends and trade-offs.