A Compact Quasi-Yagi Antenna for FMCW Radar-on-Chip based Through-Wall Imaging

TL;DR

This paper presents a compact quasi-Yagi antenna with a modified ground plane for through-wall FMCW radar imaging, achieving miniaturization, increased bandwidth, and effective real-world detection capabilities.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel ground plane modification in a quasi-Yagi antenna that enhances bandwidth and reduces size for through-wall radar applications.

Findings

44.62% increase in impedance bandwidth

High directivity of 9.02 dBi at 2.4 GHz

Successful detection of moving persons through walls

Abstract

A compact quasi-Yagi antenna with a modified ground plane is designed for a through-wall radar (TWR) on-chip. A slot-based ground plane modification in the proposed antenna results in significant miniaturization with an increase in the impedance bandwidth by 44.62%. The antenna has a high directivity of 9.02 dBi and a front-to-back ratio of 25.76 dB at 2.4 GHz. Based on experiments in real-world deployment scenarios, the performance of the proposed quasi-Yagi antenna is found to be comparable to that of a Vivaldi antenna and a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) horn antenna. Spectrogram-based signatures of a moving person behind a wooden partition and a 40 cm thick masonry wall are successfully obtained using the designed antenna, demonstrating the suitability of the quasi-Yagi antenna for portable applications using a radar-on-chip.