Railway level crossing obstruction detection using MIMO radar

Level crossing obstruction detection is an important safety feature that is prominent in rail operations, with detection systems currently deployed use various radio and optical imaging technologies. This paper proposes a prototype radar system for level crossing obstruction detection which utilises the Multiple In Multiple Out principle. The radar system to be used is an FMCW radar which operates at 24.225 GHz. The millimetre operating wavelength enables a small MIMO patch antenna array for the radar system to be fabricated on the same substrate. The radar will also be mounted at a height of 4m looking downwards onto the crossing which will require ground clutter cancellation. The MIMO antenna array layout which shows the element positions and the beampattern from its associated virtual array is shown. A short description of the proposed radar system hardware layout is then given. The signal processing algorithm, which consists of Digital Beamforming and clutter removal, is discussed in the following section. Plans for further work to develop the radar system are provided at the end of the paper.