The Fairy Tale of Simple All-Digital Radars: How to Deal With 100 Gbit/s of a Digital Millimeter-Wave MIMO Radar on an FPGA [Application Notes]

The advantages of digital radars are frequently highlighted, leading to the impression that the realization of such a sensor is simple. However, when it comes to applications that require a large bandwidth, not only is the absence of high-speed data converters a problem, but it is also challenging to deal with data rates that easily exceed 100 Gb/s. With recently available RFSoC modules, it is now possible to realize research and development platforms for digital radars. For the first time, this allows designers to characterize and optimize all components involved in such systems. This includes evaluating suitable transceiver MMICs, baseband processing architectures, and modulation formats, just to mention the aspects that have been addressed. The article also emphasizes that sophisticated digital designs are required to realize the radar processing in there is still great potential in digital realizations; it simply needs to be exploited. We expect radar design to change: where mostly sophisticated RF engineers were required in the past, an interdisciplinary team working closely together will be needed to handle the challenges presented by digital radars.