High Performance Automotive Radar
High Performance Automotive Radar
T
he ongoing automation of driving functions in cars results in
the evolution of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS)
into ones capable of highly automated driving, which will in
turn progress into fully autonomous, self-driving cars. To work
properly, these functions first must be able to perceive the car’s
surroundings by such means as radar, lidar, camera, and ultra-
sound sensors. As the complexity of such systems increases
along with the level of automation, the demands on environment
sensors, including radar, grow as well. For radar performance
to meet the requirements of self-driving cars, straightforward
scaling of the radar parameters is not sufficient. To refine radar
capabilities to meet more stringent requirements, fundamentally
different approaches may be required, including the use of more
sophisticated signal processing algorithms as well as alternative
radar waveforms and modulation schemes. In addition, since
radar is an active sensor (i.e., it operates by transmitting signals
and evaluating their reflections) interference becomes a crucial
issue as the number of automotive radar sensors increases. This
article gives an overview of the challenges that arise for auto-
motive radar from its development as a sensor for ADAS to a
core component of self-driving cars. It summarizes the relevant
research and discusses the following topics related to high-
performance automotive radar systems: 1) shortcomings of the
classical signal processing algorithms due to underlying fun-
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damental assumptions and a signal processing framework that
overcomes these limitations, 2) use of digital modulations for
automotive radar, and 3) interference-mitigation methods that
enable multiple radar sensors to coexist in conditions of increas-
ing market penetration. The overview presented in this article
shows that new paradigms arise as automotive radar transitions
into a more powerful vehicular sensor, which provides a fertile
research ground for further investigation.
Introduction
When the idea of radar was first explored back in the late-19th
and early-20th centuries, it was primarily seen as a technology
for military applications. Other applications gradually emerged,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSP.2019.2911722
Date of publication: 9 September 2019 however, and in the last four decades, radar has been studied for
fTx
Tcycle tf
Rx
2D-FFT
d
B fc ... Tx Baseband
1/fbeat
ts v
Tch
0 1/fD
t
(a)
TCRI
DBF Beam
Target
α
Wavefront
α
φ3
φ2
φ1 Downconversion and Sampling
α Digital Beamforming
Tx Antenna
2)
t)
1)
3)
(φ
y(
(φ
(φ
a
a
Y (α)
t)
t)
t)
y(
y(
y(
(b)
FIGURE 1. Graphs and illustrations showing the principle of distance, velocity, and DOA estimation for conventional fast-chirp automotive radar. (a) A
sequence of identical FMCW chirps. The delayed and Doppler-shifted reflections of such chirps, after mixing with the Tx signal, result in 2D complex
exponentials in the baseband. (b) The DOA-induced phase differences at Rx channels and the principle of digital beamforming that combines Rx signals
with phases that digitally direct the beam to a certain DOA. B: bandwidth; fc: carrier frequency; TCRI: chirp repetition interval; Tch: chirp duration; fbeat: beat
frequency; fD: Doppler shift; t s: slow-time; d: distance; v : velocity; a: target angle; y (z n) received signal with a phase shift z n at the nth Rx antenna.
Power
∆f
CP OFDM Symbol
X (f ) x (t )
TCP T
Frequency TOFDM
0 f1 f2 ...
(a)
cos(2πfct)
S X(0) P Re DAC
X(1) x(m) Re[x (t )]
X(n) .
. IFFT . CP
. .
. Im[x (t )]
X(Nc – 1)
P S Im DAC
sin(2πfct)
Channel/
Environment
cos(2πfct)
yf(0) ADC
P S
yf(1) y(m) Re[y (t )]
.
yf(n) . FFT . –CP
. .
. Im[y (t )]
yf(Nc – 1)
S P ADC
–j sin(2πfct)
(b)
ytf ,ts yf,ts zf,ts zf,v zd,v
Time
ts ts ts v v
(c)
FIGURE 2. Illustrations showing the OFDM radar principle. (a) On the left, the OFDM spectrum and its inverse Fourier transform resulting in a time-
domain OFDM symbol on the right. (b) The block diagram of the OFDM system. (c) The signal processing steps of OFDM radar. S.D.: spectral division;
Re, real, Im, imaginary; P/S, the parallel-to-serial blocks; S/P, the serial-to-parallel blocks.
PRN
Code
Tx
Lc Parallel Lc Parallel Lc Parallel
S
CFAR
Integrate Detection
Accumulate N-Point
ADC Lc Pulses -
M Pulses DFT
Rx DOA
Estimation
PRN Code
FIGURE 3. A schematic view of PMCW radar. The carrier signal is modulated with a pseudorandom noise (PRN) code. The distance processing is based
on L c digital correlators, followed by DFT-based Doppler processing [18]. CFAR: constant false alarm rate.
φ3
maximum beat frequency fbeat,max . φ4 φ2
th
R
Time ts ts ts v v
(a)
ytf ,ts yf,ts yf,v ytf ,v yt′f ,v zd,v
FFT ACMC IFFT ACDC FFT... S.D. IFFT
tf f f tf tf d
...
Time ts ts v v v v
(b)
FIGURE 5. An illustration comparing conventional Fourier-based processing with the reviewed migration and ICI-free signal processing framework on the
example of OFDM radar [7]. (a) 2D-FFT processing. (b) ACDC- and ACMC-based processing. S.D.: spectral division.
(dB)
30
20 20 20
10 10 10
Velocity (m/s)
Velocity (m/s)
0
0 0
−10
−10 −10
−20
−20 −20
−30
0
18 18
Distance (m)
Distance (m)
−10
16 16
−20
14 14
−30
12 12 −40
−24 −22 −20 −18 −24 −22 −20 −18
Velocity (m/s) Velocity (m/s)
(b)
FIGURE 6. Radar images of an approaching car measured with an OFDM-MIMO radar prototype. The results for 2D-FFT processing make apparent
the need for both Doppler-shift and target-motion compensation. The described migration and ICI-free processing overcomes limitations of 2D-FFT.
(a) ACDC (right) versus conventional 2D-FFT (left) [30]. The bright trace along the distance axis from the moving car is induced by ICI, which does not
occur for ACDC. (b) ACMC (right) versus conventional 2D-FFT (left) [7]. The moving car with a corner reflector mounted on top results in a range and
Doppler frequency migration of around 3.5 cells. For 2D-FFT, target reflections are smeared due to range and Doppler-frequency migration, whereas
ACMC collects the signal energy into a sharp peak.