Radar Sensor Systems​

Radar and Sensor Research

Objective: Design and develop microwave and millimeter-wave radar and sensors with enhanced detection, imaging, and sensing modalities.

Capabilities developed include complete ultra-wideband radar systems—circuits, antennas, data processing, and imaging reconstruction software—and evaluation of commercially available radar and sensors for applied uses.

Current projects

  1. Software-Defined Ultra-wideband Radar

    Development and prototyping of software-defined ultra-wideband radar systems.

    • Core transceiver: wideband software-defined transmitter enhanced by digital pre-distortion algorithms and machine learning; high sampling-rate programmable receiver.
    • Scope: development of circuit components and antennas; system integration; data collection; imaging algorithm development.

  2. Millimeter-wave Radar Sensing — Vibration and Biomedical Signatures

    Use of commercially available millimeter-wave radar for measurement of vibration and biomedical signatures.

    • Processing: development of application-specific post-processing software and neural-network-based classification.
    • Applications: intrusion detection; human behavior classification; other sensing scenarios.

Research overview

Research overview (PDF)

Related publications

  1. A. Alkasimi, T. Shepard, S. Wagner, S. Pancrazio, A.-V. Pham, C. Gardner, and B. Funsten, “Dual-Biometric Human Identification Using Radar Deep Transfer Learning,” Sensors, vol. 22, no. 15, p. 5782, Aug. 2022. doi: 10.3390/s22155782.
  2. S. Wagner, A. Alkasimi and A.-V. Pham, “Detecting the Presence of Intrusive Drilling in Secure Transport Containers Using Non-Contact Millimeter-Wave Radar,” Sensors, vol. 22, no. 7, p. 2718, Apr. 2022. doi: 10.3390/S22072718.
  3. S. Wagner, S. Pancrazio, A. Hossain and A.-V. Pham, “Experimental Detection of Buried Sub-mm Diameter Wires Using Microwave Ground-Penetrating Radar,” 2021 IEEE USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (Joint with AP-S Symposium), 2021, pp. 37–38. doi: 10.23919/USNC-URSI51813.2021.9703496.
  4. S. Pancrazio, P. Nguyen, S. Wagner, A. Hossain and A.-V. Pham, “Digital Pre-Distortion to Correct UWB Pulses in a Boresight Test,” 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (APS/URSI), 2021, pp. 525–526. doi: 10.1109/APS/URSI47566.2021.9704281.
  5. S. Wagner, B. M. Worthmann and A.-V. Pham, “Minimizing Timing Jitter’s Impact on Ground-Penetrating Radar Array Coupling Signals,” IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 59, no. 6, pp. 4717–4724, June 2021. doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2020.3019976.
  6. S. Wagner and A.-V. Pham, “Standoff Non-Line-of-Sight Vibration Sensing Using Millimeter-Wave Radar,” 2020 17th European Radar Conference (EuRAD), Utrecht, Netherlands, 2021, pp. 82–85. doi: 10.1109/EuRAD48048.2021.00032.