Broadband multi-carrier linear frequency modulation signal reception with subcarrier frequency offset deramp processing

Abstract

In this paper, a broadband multi-carrier linear frequency modulation (LFM) signal reception method with subcarrier frequency offset deramp processing is proposed and investigated. The proposed frequency offset deramp processing is implemented by mixing the multi-carrier LFM radar echo with a multi-carrier LFM reference that has a different subcarrier frequency interval. With this design, the sampling rate of the radar receiver is remarkably reduced and crosstalk-free separation of different subcarrier signals is easily conducted in the frequency domain. To fuse the multiple subcarriers and fill the frequency gaps, a sparse reconstruction method is employed to obtain the broadband response, which is essential for achieving high range resolution detection. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through an experiment in which the reception of an 8-carrier LFM signal is conducted and a total bandwidth of 6 GHz after multi-carrier fusion is demonstrated. An inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging experiment is also conducted with the results verifying the good potential of the proposed method in practical applications.