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Field experiment in South China was undertaken to improve understanding of cloud and precipitation properties. Measurements of the vertical structures of non-precipitating and precipitating clouds were obtained using passive and active remote sensing equipment: a Ka-band cloud radar (CR) system, a C-band frequency modulated continuous wave vertical pointing radar (CVPR), a microwave radiometer and a laser ceilometer (CEIL). CR plays a key role in high-level cloud observation, whereas CVPR is important for observing low- and mid-level clouds and heavy precipitation. CEIL helps us diminish the effects of “clear-sky” in the planetary boundary layer. The experiment took place in Longmen, Guangdong Province, China from May to September of 2016. This study focuses on evaluating the ability of the two radars to deliver consistent observation data and develops an algorithm to merge the CR, CVPR and CEIL data. Cloud echo base, thickness, frequency of observed cloud types and reflectivity vertical distributions are analyzed in the radar data. Comparisons between the collocated data sets show that reflectivity biases between the CR three operating modes are less than 2 dB. The averaged difference between CR and CVPR reflectivity can be reduced with attenuation correction to 3.57 dB from the original 4.82 dB. No systemic biases were observed between velocity data collected in the three CR modes and CVPR. The corrected CR reflectivity and velocity data were then merged with the CVPR data and CEIL data to fill in the gaps during the heavy precipitation periods and reduce the effects of Bragg scattering and fog on cloud observations in the boundary layer. Meanwhile, the merging of velocity data with different Nyquist velocities and resolutions diminishes velocity folding to provide fine-grain information about cloud and precipitation dynamics. The three daily periods in which low-level clouds tended to occur were at sunrise, noon and sunset and large differences in the average reflectivity values were observed. Mid- and high-level clouds tended to occur at 1400 and 1800 BT. Few clouds were found between a height of 3 and 5 km.

Snow makes a great contribution to the hydrological cycle in cold regions. The parameter to characterize available the water from the snow cover is the well-known snow water equivalent (SWE). This paper presents a near-surface-based radar for determining the SWE from the measured complex spectral reflectance of the snowpack. The method is based in a stepped-frequency continuous wave radar (SFCW), implemented in a coherent software defined radio (SDR), in the range from 150 MHz to 6 GHz. An electromagnetic model to solve the electromagnetic reflectance of a snowpack, including the frequency and wetness dependence of the complex relative dielectric permittivity of snow layers, is shown. Using the previous model, an approximated method to calculate the SWE is proposed. The results are presented and compared with those provided by a cosmic-ray neutron SWE gauge over the 2019–2020 winter in the experimental AEMet Formigal-Sarrios test site. This experimental field is located in the Spanish Pyrenees at an elevation of 1800 m a.s.l. The results suggest the viability of the approximate method. Finally, the feasibility of an auxiliary snow height measurement sensor based on a 120 GHz frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar sensor, is shown.

Human identification using gait as a biometric feature has gained significant attention in recent years, showing notable advancements in medical fields and security. A review of recent developments in remote radar-based gait identification is presented in this article, focusing on the methods used, the classifiers employed, trends and gaps in the literature. Particularly, recent trends highlight the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance the extraction and classification of features, while key gaps remain in the area of multi-subject detection. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the techniques used to implement such systems over the past 7 years, including a summary of the scientific publications reviewed. Several key factors are compared to determine the most suitable radar for remote gait-based identification, including accuracy, operating frequency, bandwidth, dataset, range, detection, feature extraction, size and number of features extracted, multiple subject detection, radar modules used, AI used and their properties, and the testing environment. Based on the study, it was determined that Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave (FMCW) radars were more accurate than Continuous-Wave (CW) radars and Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radars in this field. Despite the fact that FMCW is the most closely related radar to real-world scenarios, it still has some limitations in terms of multi-subject identification and open-set scenarios. In addition, the study indicates that simpler AI techniques, such as Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), are more effective at improving results.

Quasi-continuous wave radar is an attempt to give consideration to the performance of pulse and continuous wave radar signals. However, it also has the shortcomings of both. This paper aims to add a new quasi-continuous-wave coding method to the spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system. The technology of improving spaceborne SAR imaging performance by coding quasi-continuous-wave pulses is studied, and some shortcomings of this algorithm are improved. Firstly, the application of quasi-continuous-wave radar in the SAR system is studied, and the coding and reconstruction scheme is provided so that this technology can be successfully applied in spaceborne SAR. Secondly, the effects of different quasi-continuous-wave coding methods on SAR imaging performance are evaluated, including signal-to-noise ratio, resolution, and integration time. Then, several coding schemes are given, and the characteristic changes of the signal after quasi-continuous-wave coding are analyzed. The transmit–receive conversion loss function and azimuth Doppler ambiguity function of the design scheme are analyzed, which proves the advantages of the scheme. Finally, we design the hardware implementation scheme and carry out the practical test.

The capability of a skywave over-the-horizon radar (SWR) to achieve the continuous observation of a wide range of ocean dynamics parameters via a single ionospheric reflection has been demonstrated by many scholars. In order to expand the method of SWR detection of ocean dynamics parameters, a simulation model of an SWR sea echo spectrum based on the Barrick sea surface scattering cross-section model (Barrick model) and 3D ray-tracing method, suitable for a narrow-beam, frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar system (FMCW), was established. Based on this model, we simulated ideal and contaminated SWR sea echo spectra, respectively with the 3D electron density data output by the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model. Then, we further analyzed the effects of the grazing incidence angle, scattering angle, scattering azimuth angle and fetch length on the sea surface scattering cross-sections, the retrieval precision of the sea surface wind direction, and the root-mean-square (RMS) wave height, using the simulation data calculated by the Barrick model. The results show that these angles and fetch length cause a small expansion and contraction of the scattering cross-section, and have no influence on the retrieval precision of the sea surface wind direction, but will affect the retrieval precision of the RMS wave height; the influence of the grazing incidence angle and scattering angle is ~2.5 times that of the scattering azimuth angle. The ideal SWR sea echo spectrum has small broadening, but the ionosphere phase contamination will cause serious broadening and shifting of the SWR sea echo spectrum, and the higher order nonlinear term has greater contamination.

We combined two-dimensional scanning with terahertz-wave ranging based on the amplitude-modulated continuous-wave radar principle to obtain three-dimensional imaging. The terahertz-wave source is a resonant-tunneling-diode (RTD) oscillator emitting at 660 GHz. The ranging part works by modulating the RTD output power at 4.5 GHz and using an IQ mixer to measure the phase of the wave returning from the target. With careful calibration, we obtained a ranging error as small as 17 µm, measured using a specially made height gauge. The lateral resolution is almost diffraction limited.

Radar-based hand gesture recognition is a potential noncontact human–machine interaction technique. To enhance the recognition performance of hand gesture, a multidomain fusion-based recognition method using frequency-modulated continuous wave radar is proposed in this article. The received raw echo data of gestures is preprocessed to obtain the range–time matrix, Doppler–time matrix, and range–Doppler–frame tensor. The obtained three-domain radar data corresponding to each gesture are input into the three-channel convolutional neural network for feature extraction. In particular, the extracted features from three-domain data are fused with learnable weight matrices to obtain the final gesture classification results. The experimental results have shown that the classification accuracy of the proposed multidomain fusion network based on learning weight matrix-based fusion is 98.45%, which improves the classification performance compared with the classic average-based fusion and concatenation fusion.

The detection and quantification of fractures in rocks, as well as the detection of lithological changes, are of particular interest in scientific fields, such as construction materials, geotechnics, reservoirs and the diagnostics of dielectric composite materials and cultural heritage objects. Therefore, different methods and techniques have been developed and improved over the years to provide solutions, e.g., seismic, ground-penetrating radar and X-ray microtomography. However, there are always trade-offs, such as spatial resolution, investigated volume and rock penetration depth. At present, high-frequency radars (>60 GHz) are available on the market, which are compact in size and capable of imaging large areas in short periods of time. However, the few rock applications that have been carried out have not provided any information on whether these radars would be useful for detecting fractures and lithological changes in rocks. Therefore, in this work, we performed different experiments on construction and reservoir rocks using a frequency-modulated continuous wave radar working at 300 GHz to evaluate its viability in this type of application. The results showed that the radar quantified millimeter fractures at a 1 cm rock penetration depth with a sensitivity of 500 μm. Furthermore, lithological changes were identified, even when detecting interfaces generated by the artificial union of two samples from the same rock.

The measurement of heartbeat rate and breathing rate for patients with sensitive skin, such as skin with burns, is very difficult to do, especially if the number of patients is large and medical personnel is limited. Therefore, this study seeks to propose a preliminary solution to this problem by proposing a device that can measure the vital signs of several people concurrently, especially the heartbeat rate and breathing rate, without attaching sensors to their skin. This is done using an FMCW (frequency-modulated continuous wave) radar that operates at 77–81 GHz. FMCW radar emits electromagnetic waves towards the chest of several targets and picks up the reflected waves. Then, using signal processing of these reflected waves, each target’s heartbeat rate and breathing rate can be obtained. Our experiment managed to perform concurrent detection for four targets. The experimental results are between 52 and 82 beats per minute for the heartbeat rates and between 10 and 35 breaths per minute for the breathing rates of four targets. These results are in accordance with normal heartbeat rate and normal breathing rate; thus, our research succeeded in proposing a preliminary solution to this problem.

A new approach to the creation of millimeter-wave radio imaging systems is proposed. This approach is based on the use of an array receiver consisting of a densely packed (pixel size of 4 mm) array of planar mixers located in the focal plane of a quasi-optical objective, with application of the frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar technique. It has been demonstrated that the implementation of the heterodyne type of reception makes it possible to increase the distance range of the array radio imaging system up to ~100 m while maintaining the angular resolution at the previous level.