Characterization of a FMCW harmonic radar system for Asian hornet tracking

Details

Supervisors

Lederer, Dimitri ; Bol, David

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil électricien, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

enWith the recent spread of Asian hornets across Europe, the development of technologies enabling nest localization has become an active area of research. Existing solutions being costly and ecologically problematic, a solution based on an FMCW harmonic radar and a low-cost harmonic tag is developed in this work. A radar transmitting a signal at 22.85 dBm with a receiving noise figure of 3.95 dB has been designed and tested in laboratory. A processing gain of 43.01 dB achieved through Range-Doppler map computation yields a theoretical maximum range of 11.5 m. In practice, a maximum range of 3.5 m was reached in laboratory, the gap being mainly attributed to signal impurity, harmonic leakage of the fundamental frequency, and an underestimation of the noise floor. These results validate the concept and identify concrete directions for future improvements toward a field-deployable system.