Radar platform for spatial motion detection and positioning

What do automatic doors and self-driving vehicles have in common? They share a need for the precise localization and motion detection of the people and objects around them. Specialized radar systems can offer highly reliable and robust solutions, but the hardware and software can be time-consuming and cost-intensive to develop. Fraunhofer IZM now offers a universal radar platform to facilitate the development of applications for positioning and motion detection.

The radar experts at Fraunhofer IZM have developed a compact MIMO radar system to track and localize people and objects in space. At embedded world 2025, the functionality of this system will be on show in the form of a miniaturize Ferris wheel equipped with two separate radar modules. One module uses a linear antenna array for angle measurements in one plane, while the second uses a rectangular array that can detect the movement of the gondolas in both vertical and horizontal directions.

MIMO radar kit for rapid prototyping

The 60 GHz radar system is part of a radar construction kit that was developed in collaboration with the Technical University of Berlin. This radar construction kit makes it possible to design and test applications faster and more efficiently for position and motion detection in private and industrial environments. This can be put to work in the automatic doors, access controls, or as support for autonomous air and water vehicles when landing or determining their position. Based on the construction kit’s output, the necessary hardware can be specified and implemented, removing the need for iterative loops when developing hardware and software in parallel. The hardware can be developed specifically for each application in a single pass.

Prototypes for radar sensors with frequencies of 60 and 79 GHz can be created faster with the cost-effective radar construction kit. These sensors cover ranges from 0.1 to 260 meters and angular resolutions of less than 10°. The different frequencies can be combined with single and MIMO antenna concepts.