An UWB Through-The-Wall Radar with 3D Imaging,

Detection and Tracking Capabilities

P.Millot, L.Castanet, L.Casadebaig, N.Maaref
DEMR (Electromagnetism & Radar)
ONERA- The French Aerospace Lab
Toulouse, France
+33562252728
Patrick.Millot@onera.fr

A.Gaugue, M.Mnard, J.Khamlichi, G. Louis

Laboratoire Informatique Image et Interaction
University of La Rochelle
La Rochelle, France
Abstractthe paper presents a novel Through-The-Wall radar
devoted to the detection of people in motion behind a wall. It uses
a new kind of 3D imaging associated with a new antenna as well
as sophisticated information processing.
KeywordsRADAR; UWB; 3D imaging; Through-The-Wall

I. INTRODUCTION
Through-The-Wall radar already exists in a specialized
market e.g. the Xavier radar from the company Camero [1].
Nevertheless, there is no radar in the world which gives full
satisfaction in terms of target identification. More, there is a
challenge for decreasing the radar false alarm rate and for
detecting very small human motion that would pinpoint signs
of life. Last, because the difficulty of assessment, operating
through any kind of walls remains a tricky task. More
robustness against wall defects is always required for this kind
of detection.
The DIAMS project aims to study, design and realize a
Through-The-Wall radar demonstrator with superior
capabilities in terms of identification. The three improvement
axes are Doppler detection, 3D radar imaging and also
polarization diversity (HH and VV). Here, 3D radar imaging
has been studied in-depth to provide real time 3D images of
people in motion inside a room.
The paper has been divided in three main topics:
Radar general description
Antenna Design
Radar Signal and Information processing
II. RADAR GENERAL DESCRIPTION
A light-weight, compact, hand-held radar is demanded for the
Police operations. Furthermore, an antenna at close contact to
the wall is also a requirement from the operators. The DIAMS
radar has been designed to move towards these requests.
The radar demonstrator is not the first one that has been built
at ONERA and LEAT. This time, we have used Microwave
The DIAMS project sponsor is the French ANR (National Research
Agency)

N.Fortino, J.-Y.Dauvignac, G. Clementi

LEAT-CREMANT-CNRS
University of Nice Sophia Antipolis
Valbonne, France
Nicolas.Fortino@unice.fr

M.Schortgen, L.Quellec, V.Laroche

TRONICO
Saint Philibert de Bouaine, France
France

Integrated Circuits in order to lighten the radar, at the

difference of previous research demonstrators [2]. The main
innovative component is a 2D planar antenna array designed
to perform the 3D imaging processing, a kind of beamforming one. This new processing is used to locate human
beings in the horizontal plane (X,Y); then the image in 3D
(X,Y,Z) delivers the gross shape of the person for further
identification. After that, tracking and other information
processing algorithms are also used.
The radar is a kind of UWB (Ultra Wide Band) chirp radar.
This radar technique has been preferred to UWB pulses
generation in order to increase the amount of transmitted
energy, for a given transmitted power. The reason is also a
technical one. In particular, very high rate multi-channels
digitizers are cumbersome. Furthermore, we think that in the
context of UWB radar imaging, digital beam-forming is easier
to implement with data measured in frequency (after a phase
calibration of the microwave circuits).
The frequency range for penetrating all kinds of wall is the
microwave range with frequencies of less than 4 GHz. Even
walls with low electromagnetic wave attenuation can generate
phase disturbances at frequency higher than 4 GHz. The chosen
radar bandwidth of DIAMS is 1 to 4 GHz. Let us note than the
use of frequencies of less than 1 GHz are not compatible with
the antenna size. The higher part of this spectrum is necessary
for range resolution in the presence of a wall with a complex
frequency behavior. It permits to mitigate wall transmission
effects [2]. In the air, the range resolution associated with the
bandwidth would be 5cm, but in practice limited to 30cm due
to wall dispersion factors.
The microwave signal generation is a chirp ranging from 1
to 4 GHz and transmitted continuously in 2ms. This chirp is
generated by an ultra-fast VCO. After amplification, the
transmitted power is about 20 mW which is safe for humans
and also much higher than the local electromagnetic
background noise. One also needs to make a measurement in a
time inferior to the target motion (compared to the resolution

cell). This is why the chirp duration has been chosen to be

2ms.
The antenna is a 2D array of 108 elementary UWB antennas
of dimensions 75x59 cm2 (see Fig.1). A line of 12 antennas (in
green) at the middle of the array is used for wave
transmission. The cross-range or azimuth resolution is closed
to 0.5m at 4m.

Fig.2: DIAMS radar diagram

A photograph of the radar is given in Fig.3.

Fig.1: The DIAMS antenna concept

The other antennas are receiving antennas. The imaging

processing is separated in two parts:
by combining the Tx line with one or more other lines
playing the role of Rx, one can perform beam-forming
in the horizontal plane and locate targets of interest,
Secondly, by combining a Tx element with this time a
column of receivers, one obtain beam-forming in
elevation (in the vertical plane). With these
processing, one can estimate the height of the person
and its attitude (standing, ).
The technique of time multiplexing is used. This means that
the chirp waveform is distributed sequentially on each of the
12 transmitter channels. For the purpose, an integrated
switching electronics card composed of many PIN diodes
module has been build. It is monitored by FPGA. At receive,
each of the 12 channel has 8 simultaneous receiving channels,
that are digitized by a 8 channels 2Mech/s module.
Furthermore, a distribution of local oscillators (OL) for all the
8 mixers of the receiver board has been build using a multichannel diplexer. The total measurement time is rather fast. It
is in fact 4ms (chirp up in 2ms and down in the same
time) times 12 (the number of T x) that is 48ms.
The radar parts are (see Fig.2):

the microwave circuit (signal generation and

amplification, antenna switching matrix, detectors)

the antenna that contains transceiver and receiver

units

the multi-channels digitizer is placed also on board

a processing unit linked to a laptop used also for

visualization

an external power supply (battery)

Fig.3 : back and front views of the DIAMS radar

III. ANTENNA
The antenna array contains 108 Double Tapered Slot
Antennas (or DETSA). The specific element antenna used
in the DIAMS array is printed on a Roger Durod substrate
(relative permittivity r=2.2, thickness=1.27mm). It is fed by a
micro-strip line to coplanar slot-line transition. This transition
is optimized in order to obtain an ultra-wide bandwidth, a
small size, all this with a back feeding. The exponentially
tapered profile of the radiating area is designed to confer a
good impedance antenna matching from 1 to 4 GHz.
Exponential slots are also etched on each ground plane side of
the antenna. To compensate the shift of the bandwidth toward
high frequencies, absorbing materials (EccosorbR LS-30) are
adequately placed onto the formed slots (Fig.4). Finally, this
modified DETSA presents a better front-to-back ratio and less
gain variation in frequency compared to a classical ETSA. The
elementary antenna dimensions are 9.1 by 6.5 cm (/3.3 by
/4.6 @ 1 GHz). More precisions about this elementary
antenna are presented in [5].

Fig.4: Antenna design

A good directivity combined with a small antenna size allows

keeping a short distance between the elements of the array
(without increasing dramatically the antenna coupling).
Moreover, we propose also a specific topology of the 2D array
to obtain the best compromise between size and coupling. We
recall the array configuration: the array is made up of 9 lines
(with 7.4 cm gap between two lines) of 12 antennas evenly
spaced of 6.5 cm. These spacings guarantee roughly the
Shannons spatial sampling at the center of the frequency
range (2.5 GHz). Every other line is arranged staggered by
3.25 cm, so that the coupling between the antennas of adjacent
lines is minimized. This means that the measured transmission
coefficient between neighboring antennas (Fig.5) is then kept
below -20dB in the whole frequency band. The improvement
in |S31| is in the order of 8dB compared to a classical regular
array topology of the same size.

A. MTI processing
The detection of motion is well suited to separate the human
being from the background environment (room and furniture).
Nevertheless, it is also useful to image also static scenes (the
room itself) in order to analyze the detection context. Motion
detection is classically made by MTI (Moving Target
Identification). The application to TTW radar is quite simple.
Make a measurements at time t1 (in fact it is made
in 48 ms but considered as instantaneous)
Make a second measurements at time t2 = t1 +t
Make s=s2-s1
The difficulty is to choose t=t2-t1. A value of 300ms gives
good result for a standard walk (not running). This corresponds
to the time that takes the human being to leave the range cell
(30 cm) at 1ms-1.
B. 3D Imaging Processing
The beam-forming processing can have different formulations
[3]. In order to perform it in real time, one must take the more
efficient formula. The time domain formulation or time backprojection appears to be the faster way to compute an image
for rather small areas (with a computation time of less than
100ms, for 10 m2 scenes). The formula for back-projection in
time domain is the following:
( x, y )

1
Na

Na

S R x i , t i t ai e

2
c

fcdi

(1)

i 1

SRx is the time domain received signals at the antenna number i,

obtained by Inverse Fourier Transform of the measured signal in
frequency,
(x,y) is the local reflectivity in the horizontal plane for the
current point of coordinates M(x,y),
Na is the number of receiving antennas,
tai is the time of arrival, that can be computed given the geometry,
fc is the chirp center frequency,
di is the distance from the antenna number i (1<i<Na) to the
current point, for the SAR mode, d represents the round trip distance
et for the BF mode on receive the simple distance,
Fig.5: Measured transmission coefficient between neighboring antennas

This array is embedded in a metallic shield, filled with

electromagnetic absorbers to suppress the internal reflections
that alter the radiation performances of the array (impulse
response, gain variation with frequency). The shielded antenna
array prototype is presented in Fig.3. Its overall dimensions
are 102*93*20 cm3 (3.4 *3.1 *0.67 @ 1GHz). This size
represents the more compact solution, given the number of
radiating elements. Measurements confirm that antennas
performances are almost the same regardless of their location
in the array. The maximum gain is roughly 6 dB, the antenna
patterns are quite constant inside the frequency band. The
mean antenna aperture is near 90 in E and H plane (the
illuminated area is 8m at 4m).
IV. SIGNAL PROCESSING
The signal processing flowchart is divided in 3 main parts:
The extraction of motion (MTI processing)
The imaging processing
The information processing

VP
HP

antenna

Fig.6: explanation of 3D imaging

The 3D imaging is composed of two successive 2D imaging.

The first 2D imaging (SAR like) is performed in the horizontal
plane (HP) see Fig.6. If a target is detected, a vertical plane
(VP) that contains the vertical antenna axis and the target is
created. This time, BF (beam-forming on receive) in this plane
is used to give the position and the extension of the target in
the vertical direction. 3D imaging is only performed upon
request and only 2D detection and imaging is the real time
processing considered as a routine processing.

C. Information Processing
The information processing flowchart in DIAMS uses the
entire useful information within the acquired signals to
generate the rendering of the scene under surveillance (SUS).
The radar image stream generated is divided into two parts:
The first one is the dynamic sequence, which
contains moving targets.
The second one is the static sequence which contains
the inner walls of the SUS and the stationary targets.
This partition is done using an algorithm [5], originally
designed for optical imaging, and modified to take into
account the characteristics of the radar images. This process
allows applying specific and different processing on each part.
The interior walls of the SUS are highlighted using a Radon
transform-based algorithm performed on to the static
sequence. The dynamic sequence, meanwhile, is processed by
a CFAR (Constant False Alarm Rate) detector modified to
take into account the orientation of the target signatures in
radar images. This helps to reduce the false alarm rate and to
highlight targets embedded in the background noise.
Thereafter, multi-target multi-hypothesis tracking (MHT) is
applied on the detected targets, to provide the trajectories of
moving targets. It may reject also some unwanted artifacts due
to multipath effects. Finally, 2D or 3D renderings of the
detected targets are generated.
V. RESULTS
Some radar images have been obtained. We present radar
images obtained with a canonical target in a static mode
through a plaster wall (thickness 8cm). A metal sphere is
chosen for the test. Here the sphere has a diameter of 40 cm
and can move on a horizontal plane at 1.5m above the soil,
taking two positions separated by 60 cm. On Fig.7, one can
see the results of the differential 2D imaging of the sphere (in
dB scale). The two target locations can clearly be recognized
with at least 20 dB contrasts with the background level.

Fig.7: 2D imaging in the HP for 2 target positions

The image on Fig.8 is an image this time in the vertical plane.

The sphere is in the horizontal axis of the array OY (position
[2 m, 0 m]). By detecting the maximum normalized value (1),
one can locate the backscattering center of the target. In the

second case (Fig.8), the sphere is at 0.6m from the OY axis.

The founded position is [0.6 m, 2.13 m].

Fig.8 (left) : vertical image for sphere at [2m,0m,0m] and (right) : vertical
image for sphere at [2m,0m,0.6m]

These imaging results obtained in real time are satisfactory for

the moment. Nevertheless, images on the human body are not
presented (dynamic mode).
VI. CONCLUSION
A new kind of TTW radar has been designed and built. It uses
UWB 3B imaging processing in the 1-4 GHz frequency range.
A new antenna array has also been made using innovative
antennas and array design. Tests show the potential of this
radar for detection, localization, tracking and even possible
kind of identification of human beings in motion through a
wall.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the French ST(SI)2
and the RAID policemen for helpful discussions.

REFERENCES
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