Verification of Hardware Implementation and Evaluation of Target Detection Performance for PMCW against FMCW Radar System

Frequency-Modulated continuous wave (FMCW) is the state-of-the-art modulation scheme in modern automotive radar systems. However, digital modulation schemes, such as phase-modulated continuous wave (PMCW) and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), have recently attracted increased interest due to various benefits. Until now, assessments of the applicability of PMCW to automotive radar systems have been carried out predominantly in simulation environments. Although simulations provide preliminary estimates, empirical measurements are essential for performance validation. Hardware implementations of PMCW, and therefore, comparative studies between these two modulation schemes remain sparse. This study presents a custom-built single-input single-output (SISO) PMCW radar demonstrator and evaluates its performance against a commercially available FMCW automotive radar evaluation board. The results indicate that the PMCW radar system achieves comparable performance to the FMCW radar system, also demonstrating enhanced target separability.