An automotive radar network based on 77 GHz FMCW sensors

Automotive radar sensors will be used in many future applications to increase comfort and safety. Adaptive cruise control (ACC), parking aid, collision warning or avoidance and pre crash are some automotive applications, which are based on high performance radar sensors. This paper describes results gained by an European Commission funded research project and a new radar network based on four individual monostatic 77 GHz FMCW radar sensors. Each sensor measures target range and velocity simultaneously and extremely accurate even in multiple target situations with a maximum range of 40 m. The azimuth angle is estimated by multilateration techniques in a radar network architecture. The system design and the signal processing of this network are described in detail in this paper. Due to the high range resolution performance of each radar sensor ordinary targets cannot be considered any longer as point but as extended targets. System capability, performance and reliability can be improved essentially if the single sensor FMCW signal processing, the target position processing in the radar network and the tracking scheme are jointly optimized.