Highly Efficient Environment for FMCW Radar Phase Noise Simulations in IF Domain

One of the most dominant signal distortions in a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar system is the phase noise (PN) contained in the transmit signal. It has significant impact on the detection sensitivity and range. In this brief, we present a system simulator that directly generates the intermediate frequency (IF) signal of an FMCW radar system, without any computations in the radio frequency (RF) domain. Thus, the simulation can be performed up to about 30 times faster than a corresponding RF simulation, for an arbitrarily shaped input PN power spectral density (PSD). As a major contribution of this brief, an analytical expression for the average PSD of the residual cyclostationary part of the IF signal, which depends on the so-called decorrelated phase noise, is derived. Finally, the simulations are compared with the analytical average PSD as well as with measurement results, and excellent conformance can be observed.