Conceptual performance of bistatic Doppler radar for vehicle speed determination

A monostatic Doppler radar can yield accurate vehicle speed measurements over a very limited angular extent. When applied to a multilane superhighway geometry, the area within which the vehicle must be confined for accurate measurement becomes quite small. A much larger area yielding accurate measurement can be achieved by designing the radar system for bistatic operation. In this geometry the transmitter and receiver are on opposite sides of the multilane highway and both transmitting and receiving antenna beams are oriented towards the vehicle. A radiation leakage link is required between transmitter and receiver to provide a reference frequency signal. Examples are given to show the conceptual advantage of a bistatic radar compared to a monostatic radar.