This paper presents an interference suppression and signal restoration technique that can create the clean signals required by automotive frequency-modulated continuous wave radar systems. When a radar signal from another radar system interferes with own transmitted radar signal, the target detection performance is degraded. This is because the beat frequency corresponding to the target cannot be estimated owing to the increase in the noise floor. In this case, advanced weighted-envelope normalization or wavelet denoising can be used to mitigate the effect of the interference; however, these methods can also lead to the loss of the desired signal containing the range and velocity information of the target. Therefore, we propose a method based on an autoregressive model to restore a signal damaged by mutual interference. The method uses signals that are not influenced by the interference to restore the signal. In experiments conducted using two different automotive radar systems, our proposed method is demonstrated to effectively suppress the interference and restore the desired signal. As a result, the noise floor resulting from the mutual interference was lowered and the beat frequency corresponding to the desired target was accurately estimated.

We propose waveguide to microstrip line transitions for automotive millimeter wave radar modules. The transitions perpendicularly connect one waveguide and one or two microstrip lines. The configuration is simple because it consists of a waveguide and a dielectric substrate with copper foils. Additionally the transitions do not need via holes on the substrate. It leads to lower costs and improved reliability. We have already proposed a via-less transition by using multi-stage impedance transformers. The impedance transformers are used for suppressing undesirable radiation from the transition as well as impedance matching. In this paper, we propose a new transition with the microstrip lines on the long axis of the waveguide while most transitions place the microstrip lines on the minor axis (electric field direction) of the waveguide. Though our transition uses bend structures of microstrip lines, which basically cause radiation, our optimized configuration can keep small radiation. We also design a transition with a single microstrip line. The proposed transition with 2 microstrip lines can be modified to the 1 microstrip line version with minimum radiation loss. Electromagnetic simulations confirm the small radiation levels expected. Additionally we fabricate the transitions with back to back structure and determine the transmission and radiation performance. We also fabricates the transition for a patch array antenna. We confirm that the undesirable radiation from the proposed transition is small and the radiation pattern of the array antenna is not worsen by the transition.

In this paper, we propose an automotive radar sensor compensation method improving direction of arrival (DOA) and preventing target split tracking. Amplitude and phase mismatching and mutual coupling between radar sensor arrays cause an inaccuracy problem in DOA estimation. By quantifying amplitude and phase distortion levels for each angle, we compensate the sensor distortion. Applying the proposed method to Bartlett, Capon and multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithms, we experimentally demonstrate the performance improvement using both experimental data from the chamber and real data obtained in actual road.

In this paper, we propose an efficient clutter suppression algorithm for automotive radar systems in iron-tunnel environments. In general, the clutters in iron tunnels makes it highly likely that automotive radar systems will fail to detect targets. In order to overcome this drawback, we first analyze the cepstral characteristic of the iron tunnel clutter to determine the periodic properties of the clutters in the frequency domain. Based on this observation, we suggest for removing the periodic components induced by the clutters in iron tunnels in the cepstral domain by using the cepstrum editing process. To verify the clutter suppression of the proposed method experimentally, we performed measurements by using 77GHz frequency modulated continuous waveform radar sensors for an adaptive cruise control (ACC) system. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective to suppress the clutters in iron-tunnel environments in the sense that it improves the early target detection performance for ACC significantly.

The RCS of a radar target is an important factor related with the radar performance such as detection, tracking and classification. When dealing with the design of 26/79GHz automotive surveillance radar system, it is essential to know individual RCS of typical vehicles and pedestrian. However, there are few papers related to the RCS measurement at 26 and 79GHz. In this letter, the RCS measurements of typical vehicles and pedestrian were performed in a large-scale anechoic chamber room and the characteristics are discussed.

Future high-resolution short-range automotive radar will have a higher false alarm probability than the conventional low-resolution radar has. In a high-resolution radar, the reception signal becomes sensitive to the difference between intended and unintended objects. However, automotive radars must distinguish targets from background objects that are the same order of size; it leads to an increase in the false alarm probability. In this paper, a CFAR circuit for obtaining the target mean power, as well as the background mean power, is proposed to reduce the false alarm probability for high-resolution radars working in automotive environments. The proposed method is analytically evaluated with use of the characteristic function method. Spatial correlation is also considered in the evaluation, because the sizes of the both target and background objects approach the dimension of several range cells. Result showed the proposed CFAR with use of two alongside range cells could reduce the ratio of 6.4 dB for an example of an automotive situation.

A composite patch array antenna with built-in polarizer has been developed to reduce road clutter noise by 20 dB for 76 GHz automotive radars. A polarizer is placed in front of Tx and Rx patch arrays within their reactive near-field region to suppress cross-polarized sidelobe radiation from their feeding lines while maintaining a low-profile characteristic with 4 mm thickness. Additional metal-lined absorbers within the composite antenna structure, while terminating cross-polarized waves undesirably excited by the patch arrays, also serve as miniature clutter plates to further reduce sidelobes toward the road surface. The resultant composite antenna achieved sidelobe levels of -45 dB, a 20 dB improvement over standard patch arrays, at elevation angles close to 90.

Recent advances in 77-GHz MMIC module design techniques for automotive radar applications are reviewed in this paper. The target of R&D activities is moving from high performance to low cost, mass production, high-yield manufacturing and testing. To meet the stringent requirements, millimeter-wave module design techniques have made significant progress especially in packaging, bonding, and making interface with other modules. In addition, millimeter-wave semiconductor devices and MMICs have made remarkable improvements for low cost and mass production. In this paper, the topics focusing on millimeter-wave semiconductor devices and 77-GHz MMICs are reviewed first. Then the recent R&D results on 77-GHz MMIC module design techniques are introduced, showing the technical trend of packaging, bonding, and making interface with other modules for millimeter-wave, highly-integrated, low-cost MMIC modules. Finally, the existing and future module design issues for automotive radar applications are discussed.

A microstrip array antenna with 45-degree inclined linear polarization is proposed for automotive radars. The proposed antenna has the advantages of high aperture efficiency, low profile and ease of manufacture. The rectangular radiating elements inclined at 45 degrees to the straight microstrip line are directly connected to it at their corners in the proposed array antenna. The radiating element has a feature that radiation conductance for co-polarization is controlled widely enough to set desired amplitude distribution keeping excited mode for cross-polarization negligibly small. The feed line loss of the linear array antenna having 15 wavelengths is estimated 0.9 dB in the design taking the loss of the microstrip line into account. The performance of two types of developed antennas, for electrical and mechanical scanning radars, is presented. The fan beam subarray antenna for electrical scanning radars has an aperture efficiency of 53% with gain of 22.5 dBi at 76.5 GHz. For mechanical scanning radars, the two-stage series feeding circuit is also proposed for lower feed line loss and setting desired amplitude distribution. The pencil beam array antenna has an aperture efficiency of 39% with gain of 32.2 dBi at 76.5 GHz.

A novel millimeter-wave slotted waveguide array antenna is developed for automotive radar systems. An antenna structure suitable for mass-production is proposed in this paper. The waveguide is composed of two parts; an upper plate and a bottom plate. It is not necessary to contact each other closely because they are divided at the center of the broad wall of the waveguide where the electric current is small. In addition, grating lobes are suppressed by using a cylindrical cavity around each slot and by controlling the slot arrangement without using dielectric material in the waveguide. We have fabricated the proposed antenna by metal injection molding. The measured antenna efficiency results in 55%, which is quite high in comparison with any other conventional low cost millimeter-wave antenna. This efficiency is almost the same as that of the antenna fabricated by precision metal machining. In this paper, it is confirmed that the proposed antenna could be manufactured with low cost.

This paper presents a new multi-target data association method for automotive radar which we call the order statistics joint probabilistic data association (OSJPDA). The method is formulated using the association probabilities of the joint probabilistic data association (JPDA) filter and an optimal target-to-measurement data association is accomplished using the decision logic algorithm. Simulation results for heavily cluttered conditions show that the tracking performance of the OSJPDA filter is better than that of the JPDA filter in terms of tracking accuracy by about 18%.