IMAGING RADAR SENSOR WITH SYNTHETIC ENLARGEMENT OF THE ANTENNA APERTURE AND TWO-DIMENSIONAL BEAM SWEEP

• US 20140306840A1
• Filed: 09/04/2012
• Published: 10/16/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cruise Munich GmbH
• Original Assignee: Astyx Gmbh
• Inventors: Koerber, Richard, Hoehne, Felix
• Granted Patent: US 10,816,641 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 342/107
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 13/34 using transmission of continuous, frequency-modulated waves while heterodyning the received signal, or a signal derived therefrom, with a locally-generated signal related to the contemporaneously transmitted signal
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 13/422 sequential lobing, e.g. conical scan
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 13/4445 amplitude comparisons monopulse, i.e. comparing the echo signals received by an antenna arrangement with overlapping squinted beams
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 13/931 of land vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 2013/93275 in the bumper area
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/032 Constructional details for solid-state radar subsystems
• CPC Class Codes: H01Q 21/065 Patch antenna array
• CPC Class Codes: H01Q 21/22 Antenna units of the array energised non-uniformly in amplitude or phase, e.g. tapered array or binomial array

Abstract

A device and a method for determining the position of an object, in particular of a moving object, in a three dimensional space is made available. Here the device comprises at least two switchable transmitting antenna arrays having different vertical beam alignments and a number of receiving antennas arranged in a row. The transmitting antennas are arranged spaced apart by a distance that corresponds to the distance between the outer phase centres of the receiving antennas. Otherwise the transmitting antennas can be positioned arbitrarily around the receiving antenna. The horizontal beam sweep over a wide angle range is implemented by the “digital beam forming” method. The vertical object position is measured by comparing the amplitude of the received signals with sequentially operated transmitting antennas having different vertical beam directions.

Claims

1-16. -16. (canceled)

17. A device for determining a position of an object, in particular a moving object, comprising

at least two switchable transmitting antenna arrays (36), each

transmitting antenna array (36) having a number of transmitting antennas (10) which differ from one another as regards their main beam directions,

a receiving antenna arrangement comprising a plurality of

receiving antennas (20) which are arranged next to one another in a continuous row starting from a first and ending at a last,

the transmitting antenna arrays (36) being arranged such that the distance between two transmitting antennas (10) with the same main beam direction

is equal to the distance (D) between the first receiving antennas (20) and the last receiving antenna (20) or

is equal to the sum of the distance (D) between the first receiving antennas (20) and the last receiving antenna (20) and of the distance between two adjacent receiving antennas (20),

the distances respectively relating to the focal points of the transmitting antennas (10) and the receiving antennas (20) and respectively to a direction running from the last to the first.

18. The device according to claim 17,

at least the outer receiving antennas (20) respectively having at least three lines of antennas (28) running parallel, and a middle line of the lines of antennas (28) of the receiving antennas (20) respectively forming a phase centre of the group and the distances respectively relating to the focal points of the phase centres of the receiving antennas (20).

19. The device according to claim 17,

the distance between two adjacent receiving antennas (20) relating to receiving antennas (20) which respectively have at least three lines of antennas (28) running parallel, and a middle line of the lines of antennas (28) of the receiving antennas (20) respectively forming a phase centre of the group and the distances respectively relating to the focal points of the phase centres of the receiving antennas (20).

20. The device according to claim 19,

lines of receiving antennas (20) lying on the inside having no more than one line of receiving antennas (28).

21. The device according to claim 17,

at least the outer transmitting antennas (10) respectively having at least three lines of antennas (18) running parallel, and a middle line of the lines of antennas (18) of the transmitting antennas (10) respectively forming a phase centre of the group and the distances respectively relating to the focal points of the phase centres of the transmitting antennas (10).

22. The device according to claim 17,

comprising a frequency generator (13) for producing signals which are issued by the transmitting antennas (10) of the first transmitting antenna array (36) in a first cycle and by the transmitting antennas (10) of the second transmitting antenna array (36) in a chronologically following second cycle.

23. The device according to claim 17,

within the cycles the transmitting antennas (10) of one transmitting antenna array (36) respectively transmitting with different main beam directions consecutively in time.

24. The device according to claim 17,

characterised by

the number of receiving antennas being 8, 16 or 32.

25. The device according to claim 17, characterised by

the number of transmitting channels for the near range being 6 or 12 and the number of transmitting channels for the far range being 6 or 12.

26. The device according to claim 17, characterised in

that both transmitting and receiving antennas are combined to form antenna arrays for the far range.

27. The device according to claim 17,

comprising a display device for showing the position of the object by means of an antenna diagram.

28. A radar system comprising a device for determining a position of an object according to claim 17.

29. A method for determining a position of an object, in particular a moving object, comprising the procedural steps:

receiving a series of received signals transmitted consecutively in time by antennas with different main beam directions and reflected on the object by a number of multiple receiving antennas arranged in a row,

digitalising the received signals,

combining the received signals by the digital beam forming method to form a bundled antenna beam,

making a speed correction and a distance correction by means of a two-dimensional FFT by comparing output signals of overlapping lines of antennas which correspond to the bundled antenna beam,

comparing the amplitude of the received signals with different main beam directions of the transmitter with the same distance value and the same speed value, and

displaying the position of the object.

30. The method according to claim 29,

characterised in that

a speed correction is made in addition to the distance correction.

31. The method according to claim 29,

characterised in that

in order to achieve higher horizontal angular resolution in an observation angle range the amplitudes of adjacent antenna beams are evaluated.

32. The method according to claim 29,

characterised in that

in order to achieve higher angular resolution, the sum of and the difference between two adjacent antenna beams are evaluated.