I am an engineer who used to work in radar systems but now works in SATCOM. This is an incredibly well produced educational series on the topic and you nailed the presentation. You include enough details to make it interesting but don't get too entrenched to possibly scare off more casual viewers. I'm excited by the enthusiasm that you display and also like the artist style of 3Blue1Brown and Jon Kraft videos that you have built upon and made your own. Keep up the good work, I will continue to watch your videos!
Wow that means a lot! I was worried about that part being hard to understand. If there's anything that you thought could have been done better, let me know!
Just get into a company with no prior knowledge of any radar or EE. This video provide a brief but sufficient overview of FMCW for me as a beginner. Thanks a lot and hope you can keep uploading any Radar signal processing videos, I'm also interesting in UWB technology.
Oh my d***ing god. I am so blown away bhy this well explained lessons. I got my interest on PLL due to possible applications in visible light communications, y Your videos really hit the sweet spot between oversimplification and gooing to deep in the details. I am not a specialist at all, just am engineering student that got onto an extremely big project that makes me discover new subjects
you are a lgend, the way you explain and give references make it really managable to understand, and the animation so well done ,i hope you continue at this rate to explain more topics, support well deserved!!
I was checking the appendix of my DSP book this morning, and I was curious about how the radar part of signal processing works, and now I just found this wonderful video btw
@@ISuperI glad you enjoyed it! Such a huge field and I hope to cover more topics in the area of DSP. I mean what I covered here is almost the most basic you can get, so there’s much more to cover!!
@@MarshallBrunerRF Of course, I'm looking forward to seeing the 2D-FFT part in a more visual way. There is the part about the antenna gain and the signal processing to obtain the vital signs, I think it's cool to show.
I implemented a PLL in C code when I was working on a Stirling converter. A position sensor gave us a periodic but not sinusoidal signal and we used a PLL to turn that signal into a clean sine wave. I didn’t understand the math of the PLL and had never heard of them before, but I did know how to turn a block diagram into C code and it worked well. That was just one part of the controller that also included a couple PID loops
if you like this maths, you should have a look at how MRI machines work - it is similar - acquiring spread spectrum frequency samples then doing multiple Fourier transforms to resolve 3d images of what you're sampling with radio waves and magnetic fields.
@@MarshallBrunerRF super-funky MRI can actually multi-dimensional analysis of single voxels - examples include diffusion tensor imaging for mapping the direction of neurons in the brain, basic t1 vs t2 imaging to measure the difference between fat and water based on relaxation rates, or even MRS - where you do spectroscopy to determine ratios of amino acids, and their spatial distribution
Hmm... I have doubts that anyone uses the PLL divider to modulate the output frequency. Usually when the divider is changed, the PLL will fall out of lock and it will take some time for it to stabilize. Maybe with a special divider that does retain the phase when the divisor is changed this would be possible? Usually the input (reference) frequency to the PLL is modulated, at least for some lower frequency applications. I'm not familiar with higher frequency radar systems.
The way I've seen it done is by creating a baseband FM signal using the PLL, then mixing up to RF. An open source design is ADI's phaser radar (tinyurl.com/phaser-announcement). They have open schematics if you're curious. It is definitely difficult making sure phase is aligned between pulses, but they've done it pretty well - I was able to get some good range-Doppler measurements on it. Thanks for watching!
@@MarshallBrunerRF Thanks a lot for considering my request. Will be eagerly waiting for that video. If possible, please try to put the references for further details too.
Over breakfast, I was contemplating the buliding of an FMCW radar, for the kids.... Jokes aside, this was mostly foreign to me but in any case well explained.
Great lovely and to the point I need you to get into all the details and make a video about every point detailed in this video I want it and I want it yesterday asap Well sorry wise man I got just excited ^w^ but you really got my attention
I am curious if these systems also modify the polarization of the signal. I know that most aircraft radar uses polarized signal and, based on the polarization of the received signal, you can tell whether the target is at higher or lower altitude, for example. I wonder if these FMCW systems also modify the polarization over time to get extra information?
Honestly I know much less about dual-pol FMCW systems than I do about pulsed systems. I would love to make a video about dual-pol weather radar, though - that is one of my favorite concepts :) Thanks for watching!
There are passive radars with no transmitter, but they still need to be able to detect some microwave source. There needs to a transmitter somewhere, but that could be a multitude of things. Thanks for watching!
One thing you don’t discuss is that not every material is equally reflective at all frequencies. Stealth aircraft may be invisible at radar frequencies but completely visible to light, for example. By changing the frequency you also have an opportunity to “see” objects at one frequency that might be invisible at another.
Hello again 😊 I feel that you are too focused on modern digital solutions to really show how the fundamentals of signal processing does not need that "complication". Consider the PLL, the modulation input as described here is by manipulation of the frequency divider. An analog solution could just use a VCO. Consider the output, a (simple) RF decoder tuned to a centre of the expected beat frequencies would output a voltage determined by range. Note, aviation radar altimiters use a triangle modulation. That way rate of climb, as well as altitude are easy to decode with analog circuits.
Very good point. Yes there is a lot of extra complication with modern systems. My thinking was that if someone opens an automotive radar datasheet or looks at an FMCW schematic they would recognize the parts. I agree that it could be more helpful for someones deeper knowledge to understand the basics and build up from there. Maybe I will do a separate video on that. Thanks for watching!
Ah this must be the sort of "radio altimeter" used by large jets on final approach in low visibility weather. They work from a couple thousand feet right down to 10 feet above the runway. (And a frequency that the corrupt FCC is allowing certain 5G carriers to crowd into for unclear reason$$. ) Barometric pressure is used at higher altitudes to keep all the planes on the same relative reference.
very interesting field but not something you can build in your yard. Mostly associated with phd students in military and aviation industry. Nevertheless interesting field and great videos.
@@rubhern8187 well there are some radar chips for under $100 that can do well, especially for automotive use cases. But yeah the price can scale quickly depending on your use case
You can do it with a Software Defined Radio, though phase-coherent duplex tx/rx ones are pretty expensive (like the Ettus Research B100 series) Maybe it's possible to do it for cheaper with incoherent radios that can transmit (like a HackRF) and receive (like an RTL-SDR) and do a phase locked loop with the strongest part of the pulse (Line-of-sight) Or you can get radar chips like he said 😂
I am an engineer who used to work in radar systems but now works in SATCOM. This is an incredibly well produced educational series on the topic and you nailed the presentation. You include enough details to make it interesting but don't get too entrenched to possibly scare off more casual viewers. I'm excited by the enthusiasm that you display and also like the artist style of 3Blue1Brown and Jon Kraft videos that you have built upon and made your own. Keep up the good work, I will continue to watch your videos!
So glad you enjoyed and thanks for the thoughtful comment! New video coming next week!
The animation is better than the in the last video, and the animation in the last video was way above average already.
@@philip-murray thanks! So happy that you watched both and liked it!
that PLL explanation has finally allowed me to understand them. kudos
Wow that means a lot! I was worried about that part being hard to understand. If there's anything that you thought could have been done better, let me know!
I'm unlikely to ever need this knowledge, but boy did I enjoy learning about radar.
That's awesome! Learning can be fun lol
I am a radar engineer amd I love this initiative, this is amazing.
So glad you enjoyed it!
Just get into a company with no prior knowledge of any radar or EE. This video provide a brief but sufficient overview of FMCW for me as a beginner. Thanks a lot and hope you can keep uploading any Radar signal processing videos, I'm also interesting in UWB technology.
I'm working on 2 new videos now! Thanks so much for watching!!
You have made this series very approachable, even for compSci people like me. Great job!
That's very nice of you!
Your thoughtful explanation made this hard topic so much easier to understand!
@@Aldekein I really appreciate that! Thanks for watching
I have been working on FCMW radar for 3 years now and I find your video facinating. Looking forward for the rest.
Thanks for watching! Glad you enjoyed it :)
This channel is love at first sight
Awesome video. I didn't realize I needed PLLs explained with manim animations but now that they are they are a lot clearer!
@@noahanderson8688 hahaha, I was worried about that portion being unclear, but glad you liked it!
Oh my d***ing god.
I am so blown away bhy this well explained lessons.
I got my interest on PLL due to possible applications in visible light communications, y
Your videos really hit the sweet spot between oversimplification and gooing to deep in the details.
I am not a specialist at all, just am engineering student that got onto an extremely big project that makes me discover new subjects
Great !My goal is definitely to just expose people to cool new concepts and give resources to dive into on your own
Good shit man, this is really impressive!!!
@@ad.i thanks so much!
Absolutely phenomenal video amigo! Kudos!!
@@rfdspguru2 hey! The RF DSP guru himself commented! What an honor
you are a lgend, the way you explain and give references make it really managable to understand, and the animation so well done ,i hope you continue at this rate to explain more topics, support well deserved!!
I'm working on the next video as we speak :) Thanks for watching!
Both of these videos are beautiful and way better than I've ever been able to explain
@@EngineeringNibbles thanks so much! Glad you found it useful
I was checking the appendix of my DSP book this morning, and I was curious about how the radar part of signal processing works, and now I just found this
wonderful video btw
@@ISuperI glad you enjoyed it! Such a huge field and I hope to cover more topics in the area of DSP. I mean what I covered here is almost the most basic you can get, so there’s much more to cover!!
Nice Manim work! Spookily, I have a project in my 2025 Stuff To Do list to make a 24 GHz FMCW system. Excellent vid, thanks! Neil
@@MachiningandMicrowaves that’s awesome! There’s some really cool radar ICs that do a lot of the work for you. Good luck!
@@MarshallBrunerRF I have three 122 GHz SiliconRadar chips on PCBs and two more with bare board. Hoping to get some 240 GHz versions soon
@@MachiningandMicrowaves awesome!!
Thank you, subscribed. I'm very interested in RF and especially radar stuff, so I look forward to your videos!
So glad you liked it! Thanks for watching!
Nice video, I'm studying about radars, it's good to see a complete and well illustrated explanation, keep it up
@@LeonardoPJ glad you got something out of it! Let me know if I can cover anything else that would be helpful
@@MarshallBrunerRF Of course, I'm looking forward to seeing the 2D-FFT part in a more visual way. There is the part about the antenna gain and the signal processing to obtain the vital signs, I think it's cool to show.
@@LeonardoPJ yes! I’m so excited to share that video! I think the animation will be pretty cool
I implemented a PLL in C code when I was working on a Stirling converter. A position sensor gave us a periodic but not sinusoidal signal and we used a PLL to turn that signal into a clean sine wave. I didn’t understand the math of the PLL and had never heard of them before, but I did know how to turn a block diagram into C code and it worked well. That was just one part of the controller that also included a couple PID loops
Awesome project!
Thanks very much Marshall for the wonderful video series. It would really be great help for people working in RADAR.
@@arnabpattanayak-ui4mk glad you found it helpful!!
Good piece of information and an EVEN BETTER animation
Really impressed
I hope you have a good youtube career ahead❤
Thanks so much!
great explanation, thanks. I'll be looking forward to more 👍
Thanks so much for watching!
Great educational video, thank you so much for making the internet community smarter
So glad you found it useful! Another one is coming out very soon :)
Oh god its so cool that this kind of stuff exists on youtube!
@@Ariccio123 thanks so much!
Great explanation and your animation work is amazing. Thank you!
Thanks for watching! So glad you enjoyed it!
love the content , well made , well explained . keep em coming
Definitely will do! My next video has the script completed and I'm working on the animations now :)
Thanks a lot! Will be waiting for the Doppler FFT
@@shaikhalvee yes! I’m very excited to share that video. There’s one more coming before the Doppler video, but it’ll be right after that!
if you like this maths, you should have a look at how MRI machines work - it is similar - acquiring spread spectrum frequency samples then doing multiple Fourier transforms to resolve 3d images of what you're sampling with radio waves and magnetic fields.
Super interesting! Thanks for pointing me to it!
@@MarshallBrunerRF super-funky MRI can actually multi-dimensional analysis of single voxels - examples include diffusion tensor imaging for mapping the direction of neurons in the brain, basic t1 vs t2 imaging to measure the difference between fat and water based on relaxation rates, or even MRS - where you do spectroscopy to determine ratios of amino acids, and their spatial distribution
Amazing video! I learned so much!
Thanks for watching!
The animation is great. Instant sub
@@borisdorofeev5602 thanks so much!
Fantastic video. Really appreciate it
Thanks!
Very clear video. Appreciate your sharing. Definitely subscribed!
@@brucewilliams6292 very happy you enjoyed it!
Hmm... I have doubts that anyone uses the PLL divider to modulate the output frequency. Usually when the divider is changed, the PLL will fall out of lock and it will take some time for it to stabilize. Maybe with a special divider that does retain the phase when the divisor is changed this would be possible? Usually the input (reference) frequency to the PLL is modulated, at least for some lower frequency applications. I'm not familiar with higher frequency radar systems.
The way I've seen it done is by creating a baseband FM signal using the PLL, then mixing up to RF. An open source design is ADI's phaser radar (tinyurl.com/phaser-announcement). They have open schematics if you're curious. It is definitely difficult making sure phase is aligned between pulses, but they've done it pretty well - I was able to get some good range-Doppler measurements on it. Thanks for watching!
That is totally masterpiece, thank you
@@serhatarslan4138 really appreciate this!
Great video. Can you please try to make a separate detailed video on Signal processing. Excellent animation.
Yes, I will definitely do this :)
@@MarshallBrunerRF Thanks a lot for considering my request. Will be eagerly waiting for that video. If possible, please try to put the references for further details too.
Over breakfast, I was contemplating the buliding of an FMCW radar, for the kids....
Jokes aside, this was mostly foreign to me but in any case well explained.
Haha go for it! Lots of premade kits out there too
In my dyslexia for a second I thought it was a FWMC (Fuwamoco) radar. Very interesting, was ages ago I did my signal processing courses!
Quite different from FWMC lol! Thanks for watching!
Great lovely and to the point
I need you to get into all the details and make a video about every point detailed in this video I want it and I want it yesterday asap
Well sorry wise man I got just excited ^w^ but you really got my attention
@@SolathPrime hahaha! Glad you enjoyed it! Next video coming soon
I am curious if these systems also modify the polarization of the signal. I know that most aircraft radar uses polarized signal and, based on the polarization of the received signal, you can tell whether the target is at higher or lower altitude, for example. I wonder if these FMCW systems also modify the polarization over time to get extra information?
Honestly I know much less about dual-pol FMCW systems than I do about pulsed systems. I would love to make a video about dual-pol weather radar, though - that is one of my favorite concepts :) Thanks for watching!
Nice video, love it!
@@TinLethax thanks for watching!
Is it possible to get target data just from clutter alone only using a receiver?
There are passive radars with no transmitter, but they still need to be able to detect some microwave source. There needs to a transmitter somewhere, but that could be a multitude of things. Thanks for watching!
Are you using Manim for your animations? They look great!
@@Noah_Krakatoa yup! All source code is in the description if you’re curious
Very informative
Glad you liked it!
One thing you don’t discuss is that not every material is equally reflective at all frequencies. Stealth aircraft may be invisible at radar frequencies but completely visible to light, for example. By changing the frequency you also have an opportunity to “see” objects at one frequency that might be invisible at another.
That is very true but definitely out of the scope of this video. Maybe a topic for a future video! Thanks for watching!
honey wake up, i found gold
@@billymonday8388 😂😂 thanks so much!
I know if no one else got me Analog Devices app notes got me
They're so nice hahaha
Amazing
thank you❤
:)
Nice thanks a lot
@@TuralMontin-w9k thanks for watching!
Hello again 😊
I feel that you are too focused on modern digital solutions to really show how the fundamentals of signal processing does not need that "complication".
Consider the PLL, the modulation input as described here is by manipulation of the frequency divider. An analog solution could just use a VCO.
Consider the output, a (simple) RF decoder tuned to a centre of the expected beat frequencies would output a voltage determined by range.
Note, aviation radar altimiters use a triangle modulation. That way rate of climb, as well as altitude are easy to decode with analog circuits.
Very good point. Yes there is a lot of extra complication with modern systems. My thinking was that if someone opens an automotive radar datasheet or looks at an FMCW schematic they would recognize the parts. I agree that it could be more helpful for someones deeper knowledge to understand the basics and build up from there. Maybe I will do a separate video on that. Thanks for watching!
wow love.your.video
@@satelliteowner glad you enjoyed it!
Ah this must be the sort of "radio altimeter" used by large jets on final approach in low visibility weather. They work from a couple thousand feet right down to 10 feet above the runway.
(And a frequency that the corrupt FCC is allowing certain 5G carriers to crowd into for unclear reason$$. )
Barometric pressure is used at higher altitudes to keep all the planes on the same relative reference.
very interesting field but not something you can build in your yard. Mostly associated with phd students in military and aviation industry. Nevertheless interesting field and great videos.
@@rubhern8187 well there are some radar chips for under $100 that can do well, especially for automotive use cases. But yeah the price can scale quickly depending on your use case
You can do it with a Software Defined Radio, though phase-coherent duplex tx/rx ones are pretty expensive (like the Ettus Research B100 series)
Maybe it's possible to do it for cheaper with incoherent radios that can transmit (like a HackRF) and receive (like an RTL-SDR) and do a phase locked loop with the strongest part of the pulse (Line-of-sight)
Or you can get radar chips like he said 😂