Imaging radar are more or less electromagnetic video cameras. Instead of light, radar waves illuminate a surface or an area and create an image using the time-of-flight principle.

In order to create enough ‘pixels’, a imaging radar consists of multiple TX and RX antennas. The number of individual combinations of these antennas are a measure of the achievable resolution.

Typical numbers for RX/TX combinations are 256 up to 2048.

The sweetspot for this type of radar is currently presence detection/monitoring, since the maximum achievable number of frames is somewhat limited (~10 fps).

By applying moving target indication (MTI)  algorithms the performance can be enhanced significantly.

Detection of a target with and without MTI