Radar and Communication Systems

Radar and wireless communications are the major applications for microwave systems nowadays. After the invention of the radar principle by Christian Hülsmeyer in 1904 in the 20th century nearly all radar systems were big, expensive and produced a high output power for defense, air and space applications. The beginning of the 21st century then brought the market success of automotive radars and also a large increase of radar applications in industrial automation. Since 2007, the IHE performs research in the area of those new low-power radar systems. The focus is on system concepts, modulation schemes, interference and signal processing. While from 1985 until 2010 the focus of our research for wireless communications was in the area of simulating the propagation of electromagnetic waves for all kinds of scenarios, frequencies and applications we now focus on developing optimal MIMO antenna systems for vehicles using those simulation tools. In addition, we are working on wireless millimeter wave multi-gigabit transmission systems and electronic-photonic systems for high-speed communications and data processing as well as integration and miniaturization of such systems using novel technology platforms and modern integrated circuit technologies. Our major research topics in the field of radar and communication systems are:

• radar system concepts and signal processing
• wireless millimeter wave multi-gigabit transmission systems
• MIMO systems
• joint realization of radar sensing and communication both for automotive radars and for 6G
• radar sensors for high-accuracy distance measurements
• radar interference
• Integration and miniaturization of radar and communication systems
• Energy efficiency of radar and communication systems, especially through application of novel integrated circuit architectures
• electronic-photonic systems

In the following IHE´s major research projects on radar and communication systems are given: