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1. Measured RF backscatter power statistics in indoor sensing

   Chizhik, D; Sapis, J; Du, J; Valenzuela, R; Adhikari, A; Drogo, J; Zussman, G; Almendra, M_A; Rodriguez, M; Feick, R (February 2025, in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. on Antennas & Propagation and North American Radio Science Meeting (AP-S/URSI), 2025)

   Backscatter power measurements are collected to characterize indoor radar clutter in monostatic sensing applications. A narrowband 28 GHz sounder used a quasi-monostatic radar arrangement with an omnidirectional transmit antenna illuminating an indoor scene and a spinning horn receive antenna offset vertically (less than 1 m away) collecting backscattered power as a function of azimuth. Power variation in azimuth around the local average is found to be within 1 dB of a lognormal distribution with a standard deviation of 6.8 dB. Backscatter azimuth spectra are found to be highly variable with location, with cross-correlation coefficients on the order of 0.3 at separations as small as 0.1 m. These statistics are needed for system-level evaluation of RF sensing performance. 

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2. Average Backscatter Clutter Power for RF Sensing Applications in Indoor Environments

   https://doi.org/10.1109/COMCAS58210.2024.10666217  

   Chizhik, Dmitry; Du, Jinfeng; Sapis, Jakub; Valenzuela, Reinaldo A; Adhikari, Abhishek; Zussman, Gil; Almendra, Manuel A; Rodriguez, Mauricio; Feick, Rodolfo (July 2024, IEEE)

   A simple model for average backscatter power from clutter is developed for indoor RF sensing applications and verified through measurements. A narrowband 28 GHz sounder used a quasi-monostatic radar arrangement with an omnidirectional transmit antenna illuminating an indoor scene and a spinning horn receive antenna less than 1 m away collecting backscattered power as a function of azimuth. Median average backscatter power was found to vary over a 12 dB range, with average power generally decreasing with increasing room size. A deterministic model of average backscattered power dependent on distance to nearest wall and clutter reflection coefficient reproduces observations with 4.0 dB RMS error. 

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3. Outdoor-to-Indoor 28 GHz Wireless Measurements in Manhattan: Path Loss, Environmental Effects, and 90% Coverage

   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2205.09436  

   M. Kohli, A. Adhikari (May 2022, ArXivorg)

   Outdoor-to-indoor (OtI) signal propagation further challenges the already tight link budgets at millimeter-wave (mmWave). To gain insight into OtI mmWave scenarios at 28 GHz, we conducted an extensive measurement campaign consisting of over 2,200 link measurements. In total, 43 OtI scenarios were measured in West Harlem, New York City, covering seven highly diverse buildings. The measured OtI path gain can vary by up to 40 dB for a given link distance, and the empirical path gain model for all data shows an average of 30 dB excess loss over free space at distances beyond 50 m, with an RMS fitting error of 11.7 dB. The type of glass is found to be the single dominant feature for OtI loss, with 20 dB observed difference between empirical path gain models for scenarios with low-loss and high-loss glass. The presence of scaffolding, tree foliage, or elevated subway tracks, as well as difference in floor height are each found to have an impact between 5–10 dB. We show that for urban buildings with high-loss glass, OtI coverage can support 500 Mbps for 90% of indoor user equipment (UEs) with a base station (BS) antenna placed up to 49 m away. For buildings with low-loss glass, such as our case study covering multiple classrooms of a public school, data rates over 2.5/1.2 Gbps are possible from a BS 68/175 m away from the school building, when a line-of-sight path is available. We expect these results to be useful for the deployment of mmWave networks in dense urban environments as well as the develop 

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4. Firn Clutter Constraints on the Design and Performance of Orbital Radar Ice Sounders

   https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2020.2976666  

   Culberg, Riley; Schroeder, Dustin M. (January 2020, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing)

   Radar sounding is a powerful tool for constraining subglacial conditions, which influence the mass balance of polar ice sheets and their contributions to global sea-level rise. A satellite-based radar sounder, such as those successfully demonstrated at Mars, would offer unprecedented spatial and temporal coverage of the subsurface. However, airborne sounding studies suggest that poorly constrained radar scattering in polar firn may produce performance-limiting clutter for terrestrial orbital sounders. We develop glaciologically constrained electromagnetic models of radar interactions in firn, test them against in situ data and multifrequency airborne radar observations, and apply the only model we find to be consistent with observation to assess the implications of firn clutter for orbital sounder system design. Our results show that in the very high-frequency (VHF) and ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) bands, radar interactions in the firn are dominated by quasi-specular reflections at the interfaces between layers of different densities and that off-nadir backscatter is likely the result of small-scale roughness in the subsurface density profiles. As a result, high frequency (HF) or low VHF center frequencies offer a significant advantage in near-surface clutter suppression compared to the UHF band. However, the noise power is the dominant constraint in all bands, so the near-surface clutter primarily constrains the extent to which the transmit power, pulselength, or antenna gain can be engineered to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. Our analysis suggests that the deep interior of terrestrial ice sheets is a difficult target for orbital sounding, which may require optimizations in azimuth processing and cross-track clutter suppression which complement existing requirements for sounding at the margins. 

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5. Broadband Dual-Polarized Planar Antennas for Radar With Printed Circuit Balun

   https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRAMET53537.2021.9650456  

   Mai, Hoang Trong; Rodriguez-Morales, Fernando (November 2021, 2021 International Conference on Radar, Antenna, Microwave, Electronics, and Telecommunications (ICRAMET))

   This paper demonstrates the design and implementation of two dual-polarized ultra-wideband antennas for radar ice sounding. The first antenna operates at UHF (600– 900 MHz). The second antenna operates at VHF (140–215 MHz). Each antenna element is composed of two orthogonal octagon-shaped dipoles, two inter-locked printed circuit baluns and an impedance matching network for each polarization. We built and tested one prototype antenna for each band and showed a VSWR of less than 2:1 at both polarizations over a fractional bandwidth exceeding 40 %. Our antennas display cross-polarization isolation larger than 30 dB, an E-plane 3-dB beamwidth of 69 degrees, and a gain of at least 4 dBi with a variation of ± 1 dB across the bandwidth. We demonstrate peak power handling capabilities of 400-W and 1000-W for the UHF and VHF bands, respectively. Our design flow allows for straightforward adjustment of the antenna dimensions to meet other bandwidth constraints. 

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