• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.234-239
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• 2012

This paper presents a compact K-band Doppler radar sensor for human vital signal detection that uses a radar configuration with only single coupler. The proposed radar front-end configuration can reduce the chip size and the additional RF power loss. The radar front-end IC is composed of a Lange coupler, VCO, and single balanced mixer. The oscillation frequency of the VCO is from 27.3 to 27.8 GHz. The phase noise of the VCO is -91.2 dBc/Hz at a 1 MHz offset frequency, and the output power is -4.8 dBm. The conversion gain of the mixer is about 11 dB. The chip size is $0.89{\times}1.47mm^2$. The compact Ka-band Doppler radar system was developed in order to demonstrate remote human vital signal detection. The radar system consists of a Ka-band Doppler radar module with a $2{\times}2$ patch array antenna, baseband signal conditioning block, DAQ system, and signal processing program. The front-end module size is $2.5{\times}2.5cm^2$. The proposed radar sensor can properly capture a human heartbeat and respiration rate at the distance of 50 cm.