Highly efficient frequency modulated continuous wave based photonic radar by incorporating electronic equalization scheme

Detecting and tracking multiple targets in real-time poses a significant challenge for autonomous vehicles (AV's), especially in urban areas with unfavourable weather conditions. Photonic radars have emerged as a promising technology for addressing this challenge and enabling autonomous vehicles to recognize traffic patterns, navigate, detect lanes, and park themselves. For this investigation, we developed a photonic radar system based on direct detection configuration that uses frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) and three different transmission channels. These channels are multiplexed and transmitted through a single free space channel using wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to detect multiple stationary targets. To combat the effects of atmospheric attenuation, we utilized electronic equalization as a mitigation technique. We evaluated the performance of our proposed photonic radar system with and without equalization in unfavourable climatic disorders such as rain and fog. Our results, which measured received power and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), demonstrate that the received power increases by up to 54% with electronic equalization, and all targets are successfully detected even in the presence of heavy attenuation of 75 dB/km, up to a range of 500 m.

Automated summary

Detecting and tracking multiple targets in real-time is a significant challenge for autonomous vehicles, especially in urban areas with unfavorable weather conditions. Photonic radars using direct detection configuration and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) have been developed to address this challenge and successfully detect multiple stationary targets. Electronic equalization is utilized to mitigate the effects of atmospheric attenuation, resulting in an increase in received power and successful detection of targets even in heavy attenuation up to 75 dB/km.