Micro-Doppler and vibrometry at millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelengths

Micro-Doppler is an emerging technique for the measurement and analysis of target modulation characteristics, rooted in the analysis of X-band radar measurements of people. Despite the advantage of higher Doppler sensitivity, there appears to be little such work reported at (sub-) millimeter wave frequencies. We have developed fully coherent, solid state, FMCW radar systems operating at 94 and 340 GHz, suitable for micro-Doppler and vibrometry studies (as well as SAR/ISAR), which make use of DDS chirp generation combined with upconversion and MMIC or Schottky diode frequency multiplication. Due to the low phase noise architecture, the phase (i.e. displacement) sensitivity can be below 1 micron in distance.