Pulse radar with FPGA range compression for real time displacement and vibration monitoring

This paper aims at presenting the basic functionality of a radar platform for real-time monitoring of displacement and vibration. The real time capabilities make the radar platform useful when live monitoring of targets is required. The system is based on the RF analog front-end of an USRP, and the range compression (time-domain cross-correlation) is implemented on the FPGA included in the USRP. Further processing is performed on the host computer to plot real time range profiles, displacements, vibration frequencies spectra and spectrograms (waterfall plots) for long term monitoring. The system is currently in experimental form and the present paper aims at proving its functionality. The precision of this system is estimated at 0.6 mm for displacement measurements and 1.8 mm for vibration amplitude measurements.