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With the integrated radar technology being increasingly common in the automotive segment, it becomes even more cost-effective in other applications as well. Taking into account its price and robustness, radar sensors can be considered as a potential replacement for laser interferometry which is being widely used for accurate contactless sensing. In this paper we describe a phase evaluation algorithm for highly accurate distance measurements using linear frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar systems, considering hardware dependent effects i. e. frequency responses of the signal paths. In several investigations we show that this novel algorithm is significantly more robust against disturbing radar targets or micro vibrations than typical techniques. Distance measurements were carried out using an 80 GHz wideband FMCW radar sensor on a maximum measurement range of 5.2 m with a movable radar target. For free space measurements the unambiguous measurement accuracy was improved to ±4.5 µm, using phase evaluation techniques in a non-ideal environment over the entire measurement range, which was previously around ±120 µm with frequency evaluation techniques. Due to its robustness and accuracy, the proposed algorithm is well suited for harsh industrial environments such as real time positioning of machine tools.

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Nowadays emerging industrial radar applications demand for high-resolution, high-precision and at the same time low-cost radar sensors. Recent advances in semiconductor technology allow highly integrated radar sensors at frequencies up to several hundred GHz in mass-production suitable and cost-effective SiGe bipolar technologies. In this contribution, a SiGe MMIC-based 240 GHz radar sensor with more than 60GHz bandwidth is presented. It consists of a MMIC chip including the high-frequency components and a digital control module with the PLL stabilisation, ramp generation, and data acquisition. The antenna is realized by on-chip patch antennas, which are focused by using an additional dielectric lens. The radar allows fast and highly linear frequency sweeps from 204 GHz to 265 GHz with an maximum output power of ≈ -1dBm EIRP (patch only). A phase noise of <;-65 dBc/Hz (>1 kHz offset) is achieved over the complete tuning range. Additionally range profile, jitter and imaging measurements are presented to demonstrate the achieved system performance

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