Monopulse transversal traffic monitoring for automotive radar

With the recent advances in mm-wave technology new automotive radar systems that significantly increase the driving safety are feasible. One of the key requirements for future systems is to have a wide field of view along with exact measurement of target angles. Several systems using array antennas, lenses or a combination of these have been suggested, but all of these have a limited field of view due to the limited opening angle of the antenna. In order to get a full 180° field of view in front of the vehicle we present in this paper a system using a sectoral conformal array in a monopulse configuration. The system performance is analysed by implementing an advanced simulation model with the radar targets moving in a transversal trajectory testing the system at the extreme near ±90° scan angles. The tracking performance is finally evaluated by implementing an extended Kalman filter. The results from the Kalman filter show that the system is capable of estimating the trajectories of the targets along with information on which lanes the targets are moving in, making the system applicable for future automotive safety applications.