System and method for performing orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based radar detection

1. An orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based radar system, comprising:

a transmit circuit configured to transmit an OFDM based radar signal comprising Q sub-carriers adapted to push an IQ-imbalance component out of a subset of L contiguous range bins of range profiles derived out of the received radar signal, wherein L is at most Q/2; and

a receive circuit configured to receive a reflected radar signal based on the transmitted OFDM based radar signal, and

a circuitry configured to perform an inverse Fourier transform to obtain the range profiles in a time domain (TD).

2. The OFDM based radar system of claim 1 , wherein the range profiles are derived by any of zero-forcing, matched filter or mean minimum square error processing.

3. The OFDM based radar system of claim 1 , wherein a Peak-to-Average Power Ratio, PAPR is at most two.

4. A radar device configured to generate a TD radar signal according to claim 1 .

5. The radar device of claim 4 , further configured to:

provide a sequence of Q frequency domain (FD) OFDM subcarriers such that a Hadamard product of a) an inverse or complex conjugate transpose of a sequence of the Q sub-carriers represented in a FD sequence and b) a complex conjugate of the FD sequence wherein the order of subcarriers of the FD sequence is reversed, is orthogonal to the 2L-1 subcarriers centered around a direct current (DC) subcarrier of a Fourier transformation matrix indicative for the relation between a time domain (TD) and FD representation of the OFDM radar signal; and

transform the sequence from the FD to the TD based on the Fourier transformation matrix, thereby obtaining the radar signal.

6. The radar device of claim 4 , further configured to:

receive the reflected radar signal;

transform the received reflected radar signal to the FD thereby obtaining the Q subcarriers; and

derive from the Q subcarriers a range profile with L contiguous range bins.

7. The radar device of claim 4 , wherein the radar device is a multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) radar device.

8. An OFDM based radar system comprising:

a transmit circuit configured to transmit an OFDM based radar signal comprising Q sub-carriers adapted to push an IQ-imbalance component out of a subset of L contiguous range bins of range profiles derived out of the received radar signal, wherein L is at most Q/2; and

a receive circuit configured to receive a reflected radar signal based on the transmitted OFDM based radar signal, wherein a Hadamard product of:

a) an inverse or complex conjugate transpose of a sequence of the Q sub-carriers represented in a frequency domain (FD) sequence and b) a complex conjugate of the FD sequence, wherein the order of subcarriers of the FD sequence is reversed,

is orthogonal to 2L-1 subcarriers centered around a direct current (DC) subcarrier of a Fourier transformation matrix indicative of a relationship between a time domain (TD) and FD representation of the OFDM based radar signal.

9. The OFDM based radar system of claim 8 , wherein L=Q/2 and wherein the Hadamard product corresponds to a sequence of a same complex scalar constant with alternating sign.

10. The OFDM based radar system of claim 8 , wherein L=Q/2 and wherein the FD sequence corresponds to a complex scalar constant multiplied by an intermediate FD sequence where:

the direct current, DC, subcarrier and a highest frequency subcarrier of the FD sequence are real;

mirror subcarriers have equal magnitudes; and

a sum of phases of mirror subcarriers is 180 degrees for odd subcarriers and 0 degrees for even subcarriers.

11. The OFDM based radar system of claim 10 , wherein the positive subcarriers of the intermediate FD sequence have equal magnitudes.

12. The OFDM based radar system of claim 10 , wherein the positive or negative subcarriers of the intermediate FD sequence correspond to a Golay sequence.

13. A method for generating the OFDM based radar signal, which comprises Q sub-carriers adapted to push an IQ-imbalance component out of a subset of L contiguous range bins of range profiles derived out of the received radar signal, wherein L is at most Q/2, the method comprising:

providing a sequence of Q frequency domain (FD) OFDM subcarriers such that a Hadamard product of a) an inverse or complex conjugate transpose of a sequence of the Q sub-carriers represented in a FD sequence and b) a complex conjugate of the FD sequence wherein the order of subcarriers of the FD sequence is reversed, is orthogonal to the 2L-1 subcarriers centered around a direct current (DC) subcarrier of a Fourier transformation matrix indicative for the relation between a time domain (TD) and FD representation of the OFDM radar signal; and

transforming the sequence from the FD to the TD based on the Fourier transformation matrix, thereby obtaining the radar signal.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein L=Q/ 2 and wherein the FD sequence corresponds to a complex scalar constant multiplied by an intermediate FD sequence fulfilling the following conditions:

a) the DC subcarrier and a highest frequency subcarrier of the FD sequence are real;

b) mirror subcarriers have equal magnitudes; and

c) a sum of phases of the mirror subcarriers is 180 degrees for odd subcarriers and 0 degrees for even subcarriers.

15. The method of claim 14 , further comprising:

providing Golay sequences as candidates for the positive or negative subcarriers of the intermediate FD sequence; deriving therefrom candidate FD sequences by applying conditions b) and c); and selecting from the candidates a selected FD sequence with an optimal Peak-to- Average-Power Ratio (PAPR).