Motion sensing of a wind turbine prototype using a bistatic FMCW Doppler radar sensor

Abstract

Mechanical vibrations are widely used in structural health monitoring systems to evaluate the structure's stability and to detect changes in the dynamic behaviour that are potentially related to a structural damage. Radar technology is used in recent years to measure structural vibrations at stand-off distance. This paper reports on an experimental case study in which a frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar sensor operating in the frequency band from 33.4 GHz to 36.0 GHz was used to detect the mechanical motion of a wind turbine structure in a laboratory environment. Besides the radar system we present pulse based transient signal processing that show the feasibility of our approach.