A Multiple Target Positioning and Tracking System Behind Brick-Concrete Walls Using Multiple Monostatic IR-UWB Radars

Area of Science:

• Radar Systems Engineering
• Signal Processing
• Electromagnetics

Background:

• Impulse radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) radar can penetrate walls, enabling target recognition and tracking behind obstacles.
• Through-wall radar signals suffer distortion (attenuation, delay), complicating accurate detection and tracking.
• Existing methods like delay-and-sum are sensitive to target motion and wall-induced signal distortion.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and validate a through-wall radar system for estimating and tracking multiple targets behind a wall.
• To develop a novel detection algorithm that overcomes limitations of conventional methods in cluttered environments.
• To compensate for wall-induced signal distortion and improve tracking accuracy.

Main Methods:

• A through-wall radar system was designed to process IR-UWB signals.
• Wall characteristics were estimated to correct for distance errors caused by signal attenuation and delay.
• A novel target detection algorithm was proposed, calculating target existence likelihood without direct signal use, unlike the delay-and-sum approach.

Main Results:

• Simulations and experiments demonstrated the system's validity in various scenarios.
• The proposed algorithm showed improved performance in detection rate and reduced false alarm rate compared to delay-and-sum and trilateration.
• Positioning errors were analyzed and compared across different methods.

Conclusions:

• The proposed through-wall radar system and novel detection algorithm effectively track multiple targets behind walls.
• The method offers enhanced performance in challenging conditions characterized by signal attenuation and distortion.
• Accurate target estimation and tracking are achievable with the developed system.