Background
The vehicle radar is used as one of the core sensors for providing environment sensing information, and is widely applied to the fields of intelligent braking, unmanned driving and the like of automobiles. In practical applications, the number of receiving antennas is relatively small in consideration of the size of the radar sensor, so that a high and reliable angular resolution cannot be achieved. Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) radars can achieve relatively high angular resolution through a virtual array with fewer receiving antennas, so that the currently mainstream vehicle radars generally adopt a centralized MIMO system. One of the core problems of MIMO radar is that each receiving antenna can distinguish different transmitting signals, but the difficulty of channel separation at the transmitting end increases with the increase of the number of transmitting and receiving antennas. In addition, the complex variability of the road environment brings higher requirements on the sensing capability of the automobile environment, the next-generation vehicle-mounted radar with the characteristics of high spatial resolution, high detection precision, high real-time performance, reliability and the like gradually becomes trend, the number of the receiving and transmitting antennas is required to be greatly increased, and the method clearly brings great challenges to the waveform modulation and demodulation method of the millimeter wave radar, the channel separation of a receiving end and other signal processing algorithms.
In order to obtain higher azimuth angle measurement performance, currently mainstream millimeter wave radars generally adopt a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, and the characteristics of constructing a virtual array by using the MIMO radars are utilized to increase the aperture of a receiving antenna, so that the angle resolution is improved.
A basic condition of the MIMO system is that each receiving antenna can distinguish different transmission signals, under the condition of omni-directional energy radiation, the transmission signals are required to maintain orthogonality, and common methods for maintaining orthogonality of different transmission channels mainly include time division multiplexing-MIMO (TDM-MIMO), frequency division multiplexing-MIMO (FDM-MIMO) and code division multiplexing-MIMO (CDM-MIMO), wherein TDM-MIMO mainly relies on different time slots to transmit signals, so as to distinguish signals of different transmission channels in the time domain. FDM-MIMO is to add different frequency shifts to the baseband signals of different transmission channels, so as to distinguish the different transmission channels in the frequency domain; however, these two systems have the following problems:
(1) The TDM-MIMO time division transmission system increases time overhead, especially when the number of transmission antennas is large, resulting in poor system real-time performance.
(2) For a moving target, since the TDM-MIMO transmits signals in different transmission channels in a time-sharing manner, phase differences caused by small distance changes caused by target speeds can be generated between different channels, and the phase differences need to be compensated before FFT calculation of angles is performed, so that algorithm processing complexity is further increased.
(3) The FDM-MIMO mode, such as OFDM-MIMO technology, adds frequency shift to different transmission channels based on baseband signals, which clearly increases the instantaneous bandwidth of the signals, and further increases the requirements for data storage and hardware cost.
CDM-MIMO modulates different orthogonal codes for transmission signals of different transmission channels, and since the orthogonal codes have high autocorrelation characteristics and extremely low cross correlation characteristics, different transmission channels can be distinguished by decoding at a receiving end. In addition, the signal coding of Doppler dimension (Doppler dimension) of different transmitting channels does not increase the real-time bandwidth and memory resources of the signals, compared with the FDM-MIMO system, the cost is lower, and the CDM-MIMO signals of all channels are transmitted simultaneously, so that the defect of the TDM-MIMO system is avoided. The conventional CDM-MIMO scheme is BPSK-MIMO, but the BPSK-MIMO system suffers from a great deterioration in speed-dimensional signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with an increase in the number of transmit antennas, and even a false target. However, the increase of the number of the transmitting antennas is one of the necessary requirements for high resolution, so that the BPSK-MIMO system does not conform to the trend of high resolution in space.
In view of this, the present inventors studied this, and developed a MIMO radar waveform modulation and demodulation method specifically.
Disclosure of Invention
The invention aims to provide a MIMO radar waveform modulation and demodulation method, which generates different frequency offsets in Doppler dimension through phase coding, so as to achieve the purpose of distinguishing different transmitting channels and solve the problem of inter-channel mutual interference caused by the increase of the number of receiving and transmitting antennas.
In order to achieve the above object, the solution of the present invention is:
the MIMO radar waveform modulation and demodulation method is applied to a multi-input multi-output radar system, wherein a transmitting end of the radar system comprises a plurality of transmitting antennas, a receiving end of the radar system comprises a plurality of receiving antennas, and the waveform modulation and demodulation method comprises the following steps:
modulating and encoding different phases of periodic target detection baseband signals in Doppler dimension according to different transmission channels of a transmitting end, so that the transmission signals of different transmission channels obtain different frequency offsets in the Doppler dimension;
the echo signals received by all receiving channels of the receiving end are converted into digital echo signals after being preprocessed, and windowing Fourier transformation is carried out according to the distance dimension;
converting the digital echo signals subjected to the windowing Fourier transform into a matrix in a distance-Doppler 2-dimensional form, and decoding in the Doppler dimension;
and carrying out Doppler dimension coherent processing on the decoded signals, and separating out each transmitting channel to obtain two-dimensional output of the distance-Doppler frequency.
Preferably, the phaseBit encoding
Wherein h=0, 1,2, …, H-1, H represents the number of signals in a frame, l=0, 1,2, …, L-1, L is the total number of transmitting antennas, P represents the length of the phase shifter, and P is not less than L; p (l) represents one of the phase shifters corresponding to the first transmitting antenna, and P (l) epsilon P;
Representing the phase as a function of the transmit antenna.
Preferably, the converting the echo signal received by each receiving channel of the receiving end into a digital echo signal after preprocessing includes: and carrying out quadrature mixing on echo signals received by each receiving channel of the receiving end, and obtaining digital echo signals after low-pass filtering and ADC (analog-to-digital conversion).
Preferably, the vector of the digital echo signal
Sequentially performing distance dimension windowing Fourier transform on the digital echo signals of each receiving channel to obtain
Where n=0, 1,2, …, N-1, represents the number of range gates,
doppler vector representing target,/->
Indicates the phase encoding vector of the first transmitting antenna, +.
mix (n, l, M) represents a portion after the received signal and the local reference signal Dechirp, m=0, 1,2, …, M-1, M is the total number of received channels; s is S
mix (k
R ,l,m)=FFT[s
mix (n,l,m)],N(k
R ,m)=FFT[n(n,m)],FFT[·]Is a fourier transform operation.
Preferably, the digital echo signals after the windowing Fourier transform are converted into a matrix in a distance-Doppler 2-dimensional form, and the matrix is obtained
Wherein the method comprises the steps of
The kth sample point representing the mth received pulse of the mth antenna, h=0, 1,2, …, H-1, m=0, 1,2, …, M-1, k=0, 1,2, …, K
R -1,K
R Sampling the number of points for the distance dimension;
and in the matrix Doppler dimension, for SR (m) performing decoding processing:
Sdecode (l,m)=Ml SR (m)
decoding matrix of the first antenna:
* For complex conjugate operation, ++>
Preferably, the decoded signals are processed by Doppler dimension phase correlation, and each transmitting channel is separated to obtain two-dimensional output of distance-Doppler frequency
Y(l,m)=AH Sdecode (l,m)
Wherein the fourier transform matrix
And +.>
Is->
H is complex conjugate transpose operation, T
r For pulse repetition periods. Y (l, m) represents a distance-velocity spectrum of the first transmitting antenna and the mth receiving antenna.
According to the MIMO radar waveform modulation and demodulation method, different phase codes are modulated in Doppler dimension (Doppler dimension), and different frequency offsets are generated in the Doppler dimension through the phase codes, so that the purpose of distinguishing different transmitting channels is achieved, and the problem of inter-channel mutual interference caused by the increase of the number of transmitting and receiving antennas is solved; in addition, frequency offset is generated in the Doppler dimension for channel separation, so that the real-time bandwidth of the signal and the consumption of calculation resources are not increased.
The invention is described in further detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and specific examples.
Detailed Description
The method for modulating and demodulating the waveform of the MIMO radar is applied to a multi-input multi-output radar system, a transmitting end of the radar system comprises a plurality of transmitting antennas, each transmitting antenna forms a transmitting channel, a receiving end comprises a plurality of receiving antennas, each receiving antenna forms a receiving channel, and the L-transmitting M-receiving radar system is taken as an example, and the method for modulating and demodulating the waveform of the MIMO radar comprises the following steps:
s101, modulating and encoding different phases of periodic target detection baseband signals in Doppler dimension according to different transmission channels of a transmitting end, so that the transmission signals of different transmission channels obtain different frequency offsets in the Doppler dimension; the method comprises the following steps:
for the transmitting antenna l, the phase code m is added to the multi-period target detection baseband signal according to the period
2 (h,l),As shown in the figure 2 of the drawings,
where h=0, 1,2, …, H-1, H represents the number of signals in a frame, l=0, 1,2, …, L-1, L is the total number of transmitting antennas, L represents the first transmitting antenna, P represents the length of the phase shifter, and P is equal to or greater than L, P (L) represents one of the phase shifters corresponding to the first transmitting antenna, P (L) e P, and the values of the P (L) typically are different for different transmitting antennas>
Indicating a certain phase that varies with the change of the transmitting antenna.
Taking a linear frequency modulation (Linear Frequency Modulated, LFM) signal as an example, the multi-period target detection baseband signal complex envelope sT (t, l) is
Wherein the method comprises the steps of
0≤t≤T
c ,T
c For the duration of the Chirp sweep, μm
1 Frequency modulation slope of (t), m
2 (h, l) is phase encoding, +.>
T
r For the pulse repetition period, H is the number of chirps contained in a frame signal, i.e., the number of signals in a frame.
Different frequency offsets are obtained in Doppler dimension by phase coding of different transmitting signals (the coding is irrelevant to the waveform of the transmitting baseband signal), and different transmitting channels are positioned at different frequency offset positions, so that the aim of distinguishing different transmitting channels is achieved, and the separated channels have smaller mutual interference. Meanwhile, frequency offset is generated in the Doppler dimension for channel separation, so that the real-time bandwidth of signals and the consumption of computing resources are not increased.
S201, converting echo signals received by all receiving channels of a receiving end into digital echo signals after preprocessing, and performing windowing Fourier transform according to a distance dimension, wherein the preprocessing comprises quadrature mixing, low-pass filtering and ADC (analog-to-digital conversion); taking the receiving channel of the kth antenna as an example, the digital echo signal vector after ADC analog-to-digital conversion can be expressed as
Where n=0, 1,2, …, N-1, represents the number of range gates,
doppler vector representing target,/->
Indicating the phase encoding vector of the first transmitting antenna, +.is Hadamard product, and n (n, m) indicates the noise or clutter vector on the m-th receiving antenna range gate n. R is the target distance, f
d For the Doppler frequency of the target d
m For the receive antenna spacing, m=0, 1,2, …, M-1, M is the number of receive channels, d
l For the interval between the transmitting antennas, θ is the target azimuth angle, f
c For carrier frequency, f
s And c is the light speed value, which is the sampling frequency of the ADC.
Order the
The term represents the part of the received signal after the local reference signal Dechirp, the ADC digital echo signal vector can be further simplified to
Sequentially performing distance-dimensional windowing FFT processing on the digital echo signals of each receiving channel
Wherein w isrng (n) is a window function, commonly used window functions such as rectangular window, chebyshev window, etc., in order to obtain a suitable main-side lobe ratio. Distance dimension post-FFT result SR (kR M) can be further expressed as
Wherein S ismix (kR ,l,m)=FFT[smix (n,l,m)],N(kR ,m)=FFT[n(n,m)],FFT[·]Is a fourier transform operation.
S301, converting the digital echo signals subjected to windowing Fourier transformation into a matrix in a distance-Doppler 2-dimensional form, and decoding in the Doppler dimension;
representing the digital echo signals after the distance dimension FFT as a distance-Doppler 2 dimension matrix form to obtain
Wherein the method comprises the steps of
The kth sample point representing the mth received pulse of the mth antenna, h=0, 1,2, …, H-1, m=0, 1,2, …, M-1, k=0, 1,2, …, K
R -1,K
R The number of points is sampled for the distance dimension.
Then in the matrix Doppler dimension, for SR (m) performing decoding processing:
Sdecode (l,m)=Ml SR (m)
decoding matrix of the first antenna:
* For complex conjugate operation, ++>
S401, performing Doppler dimension coherent processing on the decoded signals, and separating out each transmitting channel to obtain two-dimensional output of distance-Doppler frequency.
Coherent processing of the decoded signal in the Doppler dimension, separating the individual transmit channels, i.e
Y(l,m)=AH Sdecode (l,m)
Wherein the fourier transform matrix
And +.>
Is->
H is a complex conjugate transpose operation. Y (l, m) represents a distance-velocity spectrum of the first transmitting antenna and the mth receiving antenna.
So far, the whole waveform encoding and decoding process is completed at the transmitting end and the receiving end.
The following describes the effects of a 3-transmission 4-reception MIMO radar as an example:
let MIMO radar be 3 send 4 receive, the space between transmitting antenna be lambda/2, lambda be carrier wave wavelength, carrier frequency be f
c =76.5 GHz. Let p=32, the code phases on the 1 st to 3 rd transmit antennas be P (1) =0, P (2) =2, and P (3) =6, respectively;
the number of accumulated pulses was 512./>
The 3-transmission 4-reception radar waveform modulation and demodulation method comprises the following steps:
1) For the first transmitting antenna, it transmits the signal complex envelope sT (t, l) is
Wherein m is
1 (T) detecting the baseband signal for the target, T
r For periodic cyclical transmission, commonly used are e.g. chirped (Linear Frequency Modulated, LFM) signals:
0≤t≤T
c wherein mu is m
1 Frequency modulation slope of (T), T
r For pulse repetition period, T
c For the Chirp sweep frequency duration, the number of Chirp contained in one frame of signal is 512, the number of transmitting antennas is 3, and Doppler dimension phase coding is +.>
P represents the length of the phase shifter, taken 32 in this example; p (l) represents a certain stage in the phase shifter corresponding to the first transmitting antenna, and p values of different antennas are generally different, in this example, p (0) =0, p (1) =2, and p (2) =6 are respectively taken;
Indicating a certain phase which varies with the variation of the transmitting antenna, in this case
The Doppler phase codes in this example are therefore respectively: m is m
2 (h,0)=1,
Different frequency offsets (0,/in this example) are obtained in the Doppler dimension for different transmitted signals by phase encoding>
) Different transmitting channels are positioned at different frequency offset positions, so that the purpose of distinguishing different transmitting channels is achieved, and the separated channels have small mutual interference. Meanwhile, frequency offset is generated in the Doppler dimension for channel separation, so that the real-time bandwidth of signals and the consumption of computing resources are not increased.
2) At the radar receiving end, a single-target detection scene (multi-target can be expanded by analogy) is considered for simplifying the problem, and the echo signal of each receiving channel is converted into a digital signal after quadrature mixing, low-pass filtering and ADC digital-to-analog conversion. The output signal vector after the analog-to-digital conversion of the k antenna received signal can be expressed as
Where n=0, 1,2, …,511, represents the number of range gates,
doppler vector representing target, f
d For the target Doppler frequency:
Wherein the speed is set to v=10.76 m/s, the carrier wavelength λ=0.0039 m, < >>
Indicating the phase encoding vector of the first transmitting antenna, +.is Hadamard product, and n (n, m) indicates the noise or clutter vector on the m-th receiving antenna range gate n. R is the target distance, d
m For receiving antenna spacing>
m=0, 1,2, …, M-1 is the number of receive channels, d
l To transmit the inter-antenna spacing d
l =2λ, θ is target azimuth, carrier frequency f
c =76.5GHz,f
s And c is the light speed value, which is the sampling frequency of the ADC.
Order the
The term represents the part of the received signal after the local reference signal Dechirp, the ADC output signal vector can be further reduced to +.>
Sequentially performing distance-dimensional windowing FFT processing on echo data of each receiving channel
Wherein w isrng (n) is a window function, commonly used window functions such as rectangular window, chebyshev window, etc., in order to obtain a suitable main-side lobe ratio. Distance dimension post-FFT result SR (kR M) can be further expressed as
Wherein S ismix (kR ,l,m)=FFT[smix (n,l,m)],N(kR ,m)=FFT[n(n,m)],FFT[·]Is a fourier transform operation.
3) The echo sampling data after the distance dimension FFT is expressed in a distance-Doppler 2 dimension matrix form to obtain
Wherein the method comprises the steps of
The kth sample point representing the mth received pulse of the mth antenna, h=0, 1,2, …,511, m=0, 1,2,3, k=0, 1,2, …,511.
Then in the Doppler dimension, for SR (m) performing decoding processing:
Sdecode (l,m)=Ml SR (m)
decoding matrix of the first antenna:
* In the form of a complex conjugate of the two,
4) The decoded signal is obtained by Doppler dimension FFT
Y(l,m)=AH Sdecode (l,m)
Wherein the fourier transform matrix
And +.>
Is->
H is a complex conjugate transpose operation. Y (l, m) represents a distance-velocity spectrum of the first transmitting antenna and the mth receiving antenna.
Under the simulation condition, the verification of the validity of the phase encoding and decoding scheme in the embodiment mainly comprises the characteristics of verification of the separation validity of a transmitting channel, verification of low mutual interference of channels and the like. Fig. 3 shows the separation result of the 1 st antenna channel of the 3-transmit 4-receive radar receiving end, and can obtain peak values at positions where the FFT points are 101, 133 and 197, which respectively represent the transmittingchannels 0,1 and 2. The phase coding is to separate signals of a plurality of transmitting antennas on a spectrogram, and then extract corresponding signals; in addition, the processing gain caused by Fourier transformation is higher, so that the mutual interference between the separated channels is lower, and the signal quality of each channel is ensured.
The MIMO system radar receiving end has larger mutual interference when making channel separation, and the problem is more serious when the number of receiving and transmitting antennas is increased. The MIMO radar waveform modulation-demodulation method spreads the phase code into M system in the Doppler dimension to solve the problem of inter-channel interference caused by the increase of the number of receiving and transmitting antennas, and meanwhile, the method is different from a CDM-MIMO system, namely, the method does not depend on the correlation of orthogonal codes to distinguish transmitting channels, but is similar to FDM-MIMO, and generates different frequency deviations in the Doppler dimension through the phase code, thereby achieving the purpose of distinguishing different transmitting channels. Meanwhile, frequency offset is generated in the Doppler dimension for channel separation, so that the real-time bandwidth of signals and the consumption of computing resources are not increased.
Other embodiments of the invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art from consideration of the specification and practice of the invention disclosed herein. This application is intended to cover any variations, uses, or adaptations of the invention following, in general, the principles of the invention and including such departures from the present disclosure as come within known or customary practice within the art to which the invention pertains. It is intended that the specification and examples be considered as exemplary only, with a true scope and spirit of the invention being indicated by the following claims.