A method includes generating a first modulated continuous wave from a generating location; transmitting the first modulated continuous wave to an object positioned at a distance from the generating location; generating a second modulated continuous wave from the generating location, wherein the second modulated continuous wave is generated at a predetermined time that is different from a predetermined time at which the first modulated continuous wave is generated; receiving, at a mixer, the first modulated continuous wave from the object; receiving, at the mixer, the second modulated continuous wave from the generating location; mixing the received first modulated continuous wave with the second modulated continuous wave to produce a beat signal to determine a range of the object from the generating location; and outputting the determined range of the object from the generating location.

The invention relates to a method for detecting at least one road user on a traffic route by means of a radar sensor and an optical detector, wherein with said method radar radiation is emitted by at least one radar transmitter of the radar sensor and reflected by the at least one road user, the reflected radar radiation is detected by means of at least one radar receiver of the radar sensor, the detected radar radiation is evaluated in such a way that at least one distance and one radial velocity of the at least one road user relative to the radar sensor is determined, an optical image of the at least one road user is detected by means of the optical detector, and the optical image is evaluation,
wherein at least one parameter of the at least one road user is determined both from the detected radar radiation and the optical image.

A retrofit system applied to existing FMCW radars in order to convert them into pulsed linear frequency-modulated radars with the ability to dynamically switch between two pulsed modes and an FMCW mode based on the estimated range of a target. This retrofit also includes provisions for adaptively configuring chirp and sweep parameters to optimize range resolution. The result is a retrofit system capable of converting an FMCW radar into a dual pulsed mode radar with adaptive sweep configuration.

A method is described below which can be used in a radar system. According to one example implementation, the method comprises providing a digital baseband signal using a radar receiver. The baseband signal comprises a plurality of segments, wherein each segment is assigned to a chirp of an emitted chirp sequence and each segment comprises a specific number of samples. For each signal sequence of n samples of the segments, where n in each case denotes a specific sample position within the respective segment, the method comprises the following: detecting interference-affected samples of the signal sequence; splitting the signal sequence into two or more sub-band signal sequences, wherein each sub-band signal sequence is assigned in each case to a frequency sub-band; replacing interference-affected samples in the two or more sub-band signal sequences in each case with a value which is based on adjacent samples in order to obtain corrected sub-band signal sequences; and determining a corrected signal sequence of n samples of the segments based on the corrected sub-band signal sequences.

Methods, apparatus, systems and articles of manufacture are disclosed to improve Doppler velocity estimation. An example apparatus is disclosed including a transmitter to transmit a first sweep signal at a first position in a first block of time during a transmit time sequence pattern, and transmit a second sweep signal at a second position in a second block of time during the transmit time sequence pattern, the second position different than the first position. The example apparatus also includes a velocity analyzer to determine a velocity and a direction of arrival of a target object identified during the transmit time sequence pattern.

A method for detecting the environment of a motor vehicle utilizing a radar system includes bringing about frequency modulation utilizing an oscillator and generating a sequence of transmission-frequency-modulated transmit signals, which each having the same nominal frequency profile, apart from a variation in frequency position. Received signals for object detection are evaluated. A one time-discrete signal per transmit signal is used which includes information about the frequency profile of the transmit signal and which is generated by sampling of an analog signal or by reading out of a free-running counter at predetermined points in time. These time-discrete signals are unnormalized by way of the transmit signals with regard to the position of their phase and/or their initial value.

In an illustrative integrated circuit, a chirp generator provides a chirp signal having linearly-ramped chirp intervals, while a shift frequency generator provides a signal having a different shift frequency during each of multiple segments in each chirp interval. A modulator combines the signals to derive a segmented chirp signal having multiple linearly-ramped chirp segments in each chirp interval. The modulator may be a single sideband modulator to provide frequency up-shifted and frequency down-shifted chirp segments. The segmented chirp signal may be suppressed during resettling intervals of the original chirp signal.

A radar antenna calibration method includes: forming a detection matrix from signals detected by an arrangement of receive antennas in response to chirps transmitted by an arrangement of transmit antennas, the detection matrix having multiple rows corresponding to the chirps, multiple columns corresponding to a signal sample, and multiple planes corresponding the receive antennas; deriving a range matrix by performing a frequency transform on a portion of each row of the detection matrix; extracting a slice of the range matrix, with different rows of the slice being associated with different chirps and with different receive antennas; deriving a velocity matrix from the extracted slice by performing a frequency transform on a portion of each column of the extracted slice; analyzing the velocity matrix to determine a current peak width; and adjusting, based on the current peak width, phase shifts associated with one or more of the receive antennas.

A radar system includes a radar transceiver device, which includes a transmitter front end circuit for transmitting a chirp signal towards an object. The radar transceiver device includes a receiver front end circuit for receiving the reflected chirp signal from the object. The radar transceiver device includes a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) to generate a transmitted chirp signal. The radar transceiver device includes a mixer configured to generate four intermediate frequency output signals having different phases. The radar system includes a controller device, which includes a processor, and a memory for storing the intermediate frequency output signals and instructions for executing in the processor. The instructions cause the processor to generate a complex Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) result by performing a FFT of the intermediate frequency output signals while using zero-padding. The instructions cause the processor to determine, using interpolation, a maximum amplitude in the FFT result and identifying the frequency corresponding to the maximum amplitude. The instructions cause the processor to calculate a distance to the object using the determined frequency.

A radar apparatus is mountable to a vehicle. The radar apparatus includes an observing unit, an estimating unit, a predicting unit, a matching processing unit, and a determining unit. The estimating unit calculates, regarding an initial detection target object, a plurality of velocity estimation values in which folding is presumed, using a velocity observation value calculated by the observing unit. The predicting unit calculates a prediction value from each of the plurality of velocity estimation values. The matching processing unit performs association of the velocity prediction value and the velocity observation value.