A Portable and Low-cost Frequency-scanned Traffic Radar with Metasurface Collimation

Highway traffic monitoring is important for obstacle detection and collision mitigation. In this work, a portable millimeter-wave frequency-scanned radar is developed to provide a low-cost, low maintenance alternative to mechanically scanned radar sensors. For this purpose, small components and software were utilized to recreate the functionality of a function generator and oscilloscope. This allowed the radar to shrink in overall size to allow better portability while exploring opportunities in component selection toward chip-level components for use in a printed circuit board radar, which would further reduce the implementation cost significantly. The radar was tested both indoors and outdoors to operate at 33.5 to 35 GHz and allow up to a target range of 150 m with an electronic scanning ability from +5 to -20 degrees. Future development would be expected to increase the range close to 1 km with more refined components and better amplifiers.M.A.S