Design of X-band complementary metal-oxide semiconductor-based frequency-modulation continuous-wave sensor

Abstract

This study presents an X-band complementary metal-oxide semiconductor-based frequency-modulation continuous-wave (FMCW) sensor system for transportation management. The proposed sensor system has two antennas, one to transmit signals and the other to receive them. The complete radio frequency (RF) transceiver is based on standard 0.18 mm one-poly six-metal (1P6M) CMOS technology with a chip area of 1.68 mm x 1.6 mm. Two planar leaky-mode antenna arrays with a gain of 18 dB are also designed. Experimental results indicate that the isolation between two antenna arrays that are 5.0 mm apart exceeds 42.0 dB at 10.5 GHz. The prototype of the FMCW sensor system is used in the range measurement of multiple lanes for the transportation management system (TMS). The major contribution of this study is that it integrates a 0.18 mm CMOS transceiver and antenna arrays into an FMCW RF front end, and employs an IF amplifier and a digital signal processor to demonstrate that the beat frequencies are linear. Measurements made in field tests agree closely with the simulation results.