Radar system development is generally costly, complicated and time consuming. This has kept its presence mostly inside industries and research centers with the necessary equipment to produce and operate such a system. Until recent years, realization of a fully integrated radar system on a chip was not feasible, however this is no longer the case and there are several types of sensors available from different manufacturers.

Radar sensors offer some advantages that are unmatched by other sensing and imaging technologies such as operation in fog, dust and over long distances. This makes them suitable for use in Navigation, Automation, Robotics, and Security systems applications. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate the feasibility of a simplified radar system’s user interface via integration with the most common portable computer, a Smartphone, to make it possible for users with minimal knowledge of radar systems design and operation to use it in different applications.

Smartphones are very powerful portable computers equipped with a suite of sensors with the potential to be used in a wide variety of applications. It seems logical to take advantage of their computing power and portability. The combination of a radar sensor and a smartphone can act as a demonstrator in an effort to bring radar sensors one step closer to the hands of the developers and consumers.

In this study the following areas are explored and proper solutions are implemented;

• Design of a control board with capability to drive a radar sensor, capture the signal and transfer it to a secondary device (PC or Smartphone) both wired and wirelessly e.g. Bluetooth.
• A firmware that is capable of driving the control board and can receive, interpret and execute messages from a PC and or a Smartphone
• A cross compatible master software that can run on Linux, Windows, Mac and Android OSs and is capable of communication with the firmware/control board
• Proper analysis methods for signal capture and process purposes
• Automation of some parameter adjustment for different modes of operation of the Radar System in order to make the user interface as simple as possible
• A user friendly user-interface and API that can run on both PC and Smartphone