Automotive radar sensor extended by a communication capability

The technology for automotive short range radar applications at 24GHz is ready for mass production and so it can be expected that an increasing number of cars will be equipped with several radar sensors observing the complete car surroundings. In order to improve the reliability of the sensor information and to gain additional information e.g. by triangulation, data from different sensors can be combined. One step further is to exchange sensor data between neighbouring cars by a data link to continuously transmit vehicle safety relevant sensor information. For this purpose it is necessary to establish an intervehicle communication (IVC) link. This task can be realized by independent communications links. A different attractive approach would be to partially use the hardware and the frequency spectrumof the existing radar sensors. This was the impulse to extend a pulse radar at a center frequency of 24.125GHz by a communication transceiver in the same frequency band. The communication band, which is small compared to the radar spectrum, is placed in a range with low radar power spectral density. The pulse radar principle was chosen, because it is most common and key components, respectively RF-Frontends, are already available. The principle also provides short measurement times and high dynamic range. In the following the basic concept of the built prototypes and the signal processing of the radar and transceiver on Stratix®-FPGAs (EP1S25F780C5) from ALTERA™ are described. The suitability of the system concept is discussed based on measurements and simulations.