Orthogonal Circular Polarized Transmitter and Receiver Antennas for Mitigation of Mutual Coupling in Monostatic Radars

TL;DR

This paper introduces orthogonal circularly polarized antennas, specifically quadrafilar helical antennas, to reduce mutual coupling in through-wall radar systems, enhancing detection capabilities despite wall attenuation.

Contribution

It proposes using orthogonal circular polarization with QHA antennas to mitigate mutual coupling in through-wall radars, demonstrating improved performance over traditional antennas.

Findings

QHA antennas have low mutual coupling with orthogonal polarization.

The proposed system maintains target detection despite wall attenuation.

QHA antennas outperform Vivaldi and horn antennas in mutual coupling reduction.

Abstract

Through-wall radar systems require compact, wideband and high gain antennas for detecting targets. Building walls introduce considerable attenuation on the radar signals. When the transmitted power is raised to compensate the through-wall attenuation, the direct coupling between the transmitter and receiver can saturate the receiver because of which weaker reflections off the target may remain undetected. In this paper, we propose using transmitter and receiver antennas of orthogonal circular polarization to reduce the direct coupling between the transmitter and receiver while retaining the first bounce off the target. In our paper, we demonstrate that the quadrafilar helical antenna (QHA) is a good candidate for this operation since it is characterized by a small size, wide frequency band of operation, high gain and low axial ratio over a wide field of view. We compare the reduced mutual coupling between the transmitter and receiver elements for the oppositely polarized QHA antennas with other commonly used through-wall radar antennas such as the Vivaldi and horn antennas. The system is tested in through-wall conditions.