A phase modulated continuous wave (PMCW) multiple input multiple output (MEM) radar system is described herein. The radar system is configured to compute range, velocity, and direction of arrival angle of objects relative to the radar system. The radar system includes several transmitting antennas and several receiving antennas, where selected transmitting antennas simultaneously transmit radar signals based on the same modulation signal. Per transmitting antenna, the transmissions are modulated with respective phase offsets on a per pulse repetition interval (PRI) basis. Hence, a coupling between phase shifts over PRI and transmitter positions is established. Effectively, then, each transmitting antenna is labeled with a velocity offset that corresponds to the phase rate of change assigned to the transmitting antenna. This approach is referred to herein as velocity-labeled multiplexing (VLM).

The invention relates to a method for determining at least one piece of object information about at least one object sensed by means of a radar system and to a radar system. According to the method, transmission signals in the form of chirps are transmitted by at least three transmitters in each case in chirp sequences in a monitoring region of the radar system. Echoes of the transmission signals reflected at the at least one object are received as reception signals by means of at least one receiver and, if necessary, are brought into a form that can be used by an electronic control and/or evaluation device. The reception signals are subjected to at least one two-dimensional discrete Fourier transformation. At least one target signal (ZS1_a, ZS2_a, ZS3_a, ZS4_a, ZS1_b, ZS2_b, ZS3_b, ZS4_b) is determined from the outcome of the at least one two-dimensional discrete Fourier transformation. At least one piece of object information is determined from the at least one target signal (ZS1_a, ZS2_a, ZS3_a, ZS4_a, ZS1_b, ZS2_b, ZS3_b, ZS4_b). On the transmitter side, at least one first transmission signal and at least two other transmission signals are generated from a frequency-modulated continuous wave signal and simultaneously transmitted into the monitoring region of the radar system by means of a separate transmitter in each case. The at least two other transmission signals are each encoded by means of a phase modulation in relation to the at least one first transmission signal. The respective phase positions of the at least two other transmission signals are each incremented or decremented from one chirp to the next by a constant phase shift amount. Different phase shift amounts are used for the at least two other transmission signals. The respective phase shift amounts for the at least two other transmission signals are specified such that for at least three of the transmission signals, including the at least one first transmission signal, the differences in amount between the phase shift amounts of two of the at least three transmission signals are different.

A method for encoding and storing digital data, which include a plurality of real values, in a signal processing unit of a radar sensor. In the method, at least one real value r in an exponential representation in the form r=m.Math.b.sup.−k is stored, where m is a digital mantissa having a length p, b is a base, and k is a positive number that is encoded as a digital number having a length q. The values r for the compressed storage are transformed into an exponential representation in the form r=m*.Math.b.sup.−f(k), where m* is the mantissa and f is a function of k that is selected from multiple functions, and the selection of function f takes place based on a value distribution of the values to be stored.

A radar monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) includes a first transmission channel configured to output a first continuous-wave transmit signal based on a local oscillator signal having a first frequency; a first phase shifter provided on the first transmission channel and configured to apply a first phase setting to the first continuous-wave transmit signal to generate a first transmit signal having the first frequency; a first transmit monitoring signal path configured to couple out a portion of the first transmit signal from the first transmission channel as a first transmit monitoring signal; a frequency multiplier configured to receive a test signal and convert it into a multiplied test signal having a second frequency, where the first and the second frequencies are separated by a frequency offset; and a down-conversion mixer configured to mix the multiplied test signal and the first transmit monitoring signal to generate a first mixer output signal.

A radar system is provided that includes transmission signal generation circuitry, a transmit channel coupled to the transmission generation circuitry to receive a continuous wave test signal, the transmit channel configurable to output a test signal based on the continuous wave signal in which a phase angle of the test signal is changed in discrete steps within a phase angle range, a receive channel coupled to the transmit channel via a feedback loop to receive the test signal, the receive channel including an in-phase (I) channel and a quadrature (Q) channel, a statistics collection module configured to collect energy measurements of the test signal output by the I channel and the test signal output by the Q channel at each phase angle, and a processor configured to estimate phase and gain imbalance of the I channel and the Q channel based on the collected energy measurements.

A radar system is provided that includes a radar transceiver integrated circuit (IC) configurable to transmit a first frame of chirps, and another radar transceiver IC configurable to transmit a second frame of chirps at a time delay ΔT, wherein ΔT=T.sub.c/K, K≥2 and T.sub.c is an elapsed time from a start of one chirp in the first frame and the second frame and a start of a next chirp in the first frame and the second frame, wherein the radar system is configured to determine a velocity of an object in a field of view of the radar system based on first digital intermediate frequency signals generated responsive to receiving reflected chirps of the first frame and second digital IF signals generated responsive to receiving reflected chirps of the time delayed second frame, wherein the maximum measurable velocity is increased by a factor of K.

A radar hardware accelerator (HWA) includes a fast Fourier transform (FFT) engine including a pre-processing block for providing interference mitigation and/or multiplying a radar data sample stream received from ADC buffers within a split accelerator local memory that also includes output buffers by a pre-programmed complex scalar or a specified sample from an internal look-up table (LUT) to generate pre-processed samples. A windowing plus FFT block (windowed FFT block) is for multiply the pre-processed samples by a window vector and then processing by an FFT block for performing a FFT to generate Fourier transformed samples. A post-processing block is for computing a magnitude of the Fourier transformed samples and performing a data compression operation for generating post-processed radar data. The pre-processing block, windowed FFT block and post-processing block are connected in one streaming series data path.

A method for determining angle information about a direction of a target object in a radar system for a vehicle, wherein the following steps are performed: providing a first item of sensing information for a first modulation mode of the radar system, providing at least one second item of sensing information for at least a second modulation mode of the radar system, and combining the sensing information for the different modulation modes in order to perform the determination of the angle information on the basis of the combined sensing information.

A fast ramp frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar system (100) is described herein, where the fast ramp FMCW radar system is configured to employ velocity labeled multiplexing (VLM) in connection with generating detections for objects in a scene. Transmitters (110, 112) in the radar system are assigned different velocity labels that corresponds to different phase rates of change of consecutive chirps in signals emitted by the transmitters. Approaches for generating detections based upon echo signals that correspond to the emitted signals are also described herein.

One embodiment of the disclosure relates to a vehicle radar device and a method for controlling the same. According to the present embodiments, a vehicle radar device may comprise an antenna unit including Nt transmission antennas and Nr reception antennas, wherein Nt is a natural number equal to or larger than 1, and Nr is a natural number equal to or larger than 2, a transceiver controlling the transmission antenna to transmit a transmission signal and the reception antenna to receive a reception signal reflected by a target, a signal processor detecting one or more peak signals for the target and separately detecting Nt*Nr channel reception signals corresponding to each peak signal, a target angle estimator calculating a target angle estimate from k channel reception signals selected from among the Nt*Nr channel reception signals, and a target size information estimator calculating size information about the target based on up to .sub.NV*NrCk target angle estimates calculated by the target angle estimator.