Automotive radar – A signalprocessing perspective oncurrent technology andfuture systems

Abstract

Radar systems are a key technology of modern vehicle safety & comfort systems. Without doubt it will only be the symbiosis of Radar, Lidar and camera-based sensor systems which can enable advanced autonomous driving functions soon. Several next generation car models are such announced to have more than 10 radar sensors per vehicle, allowing for the generation of a radar-based 360° surround view necessary for advanced driver assistance as well as semi-autonomous operation. Hence the demand from the automotive industry for high-precision, multi-functional radar systems is higher than ever before, and the increased requirements on functionality and sensor capabilities lead to research and development activities in the field of automotive radar systems in both industry and academic worlds. Current automotive radar technology is almost exclusively based on the principle of frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar, which has been well known for several decades. However, together with an increase of hardware capabilities such as higher carrier frequencies, modulation bandwidths and ramp slopes, as well as a scaling up of simultaneously utilized transmit and receive channels with independent modulation features, new degrees of freedom have been added to traditional FMCW radar system design and signal processing. The anticipated presentation will accordingly introduce the topic with a review on the fundamentals of radar and FMCW radar. After introducing the system architecture of traditional and modern automotive FMCW radar sensors, with e.g. insights into the concepts of distributed or centralized processing and sensor data fusion, the presentation will dive into the details of fast-chirp FMCW processing – the modulation mode which is used by the vast majority of current automotive FMCW radar systems.