Design of a High-Precision FMCW Radar Liquid Level Sensor

To meet the demands for high accuracy and high reliability in industrial liquid level measurement, existing frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar studies mostly focus on optimizing individual algorithms or radio frequency modules, while lacking a complete hardware-software co-design system solution. This research designs and implements an embedded liquid level measurement system based on an X-band FMCW radar and the Zynq processing system (PS) - programmable logic (PL) heterogeneous architecture. On the hardware side, a full radio frequency transceiver chain and high-speed acquisition link are constructed. The PL side performs real-time data acquisition and high-speed data transmission, while the PS side deploys a three-stage ranging algorithm to achieve high-precision liquid level estimation. Experimental results demonstrate that the system achieves a measurement error of less than 2 mm within a 50 m measurement range, providing a complete technical solution for the industrial deployment of FMCW radar level meters.