Millimeter-wave Radar FOD Detection Technology

Certainforeign substances which may damage the aircrafts or aircraftsystems are called Foreign Object Debris, abbreviated as FOD. So far, manycountries in the world have put a lot of manpower, material and financial resourcesinto exploring the advanced automatic FOD equipment and technologies,but theresults in our country are not encouraging,lagging far behind the world advanced level.Based on researches of automatic FOD detection technologies all over the world, thispaper focuses on the study of millimeter wave FOD detection technology and tries tointroduce it to FOD detection in airports, thus replacing the regular manual inspectionwhich is inefficient and unreliable.Firstly, the background and significance of thistopicare explained,followedbythe introduction ofdeveloping status of FOD detection system in domestic andinternational countries.Secondly, the performance of the millimeter-wave radar system for FODdetection, including carrier frequency and modulation scheme, is analyzed，in additionwith a brief introduction onstepped frequency wideband radar system and elaborationon design principlesof main system parameters.Thirdly, the overall function and main parameters of the millimeter-waveradar system for FOD detection are presented.According to these parameters,modules like radio frequency module, intermediate frequency module and signalprocessing module are designed.Besides, several key technologies, includingtiming control technology and uppercomputer programming technology areinvolved.Finally, four important technologies onstatic and low scattering targetdetectionunder complex background are studied:one-dimensional highresolutionimaging technology, pulse accumulation technology, background cancellationtechnology and CA-CFAR algorithm. This paper proves the feasibility of thesetarget detection technologiesbased onthe simulation resultsandthe data obtainedfrom outfield experiments. The target detection approach of the millimeter-waveradar system for FOD detection is indicatedat the end of this paper.