IMAGING RADAR SENSOR WITH NARROW ANTENNA LOBE AND WIDE ANGLE DETECTION RANGE

• US 20140340253A1
• Filed: 09/04/2012
• Published: 11/20/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cruise Munich GmbH
• Original Assignee: Astyx Gmbh
• Inventors: Koerber, Richard, Giere, Andre
• Granted Patent: US 9,817,110 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 342/104
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 13/06 Systems determining position data of a target
• 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 13/58 Velocity or trajectory determination systems; Sense-of-movement determination systems
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 13/931 of land vehicles
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 7/032 Constructional details for solid-state radar subsystems
• CPC Class Codes: H01Q 21/061 Two dimensional planar arrays

Abstract

The invention relates to a device for detecting objects within a sweep range, comprising at least two switchable transmitting antennas, a plurality of receiving antennas, the transmitting antennas and receiving antennas respectively extending longitudinally, parallel to one another, in a first direction, and the receiving antennas being arranged in a row and the row extending in a second direction, the receiving antennas and the transmitting antennas being arranged such that they produce a synthetic receiving antenna array for the beam sweep by means of the sequential activation of the transmitting antennas and the positions of the transmitting and receiving antennas, the resulting distance corresponding to the positions of the receiving antennas in the synthetic receiving antenna array in the second direction d, the adjacent receiving antennas in the device being spaced apart by a distance of d2 or greater and d2 being twice as great as distance d.

Claims

1-11. -11. (canceled)

12. A device for determining the position of objects, in particular moving objects, comprising

at least two switchable transmitting antennas (10),

a plurality of receiving antennas (20),

the transmitting antennas (10) and receiving antennas (20) respectively extending longitudinally, parallel to one another, in a first direction (y),

and the receiving antennas (10) being arranged in a row and the row extending in a second direction (x), adjacent receiving antennas (20) respectively being spaced apart from one another by a distance d2,

the transmitting antennas (10) being offset from one another in relation to the first direction (y) and being spaced apart from one another by a distance d in relation to the second direction (x), and the distance d2 between adjacent receiving antennas (20) being at least twice as great as the distance d between the transmitting antennas (10).

21. A method for sweeping the beam of a radar sensor into extreme sweep angles, comprising the procedural steps:

sequential operation of two offset transmitting antennas and receiving the reflected signals by means of a receiving antenna array,

digitalisation of the received signals,

overlapping arrangement of the signals of the receiving channels in order to form a synthetic array,

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

implementation of a speed correction, derived from the temporal offset between the two transmitted signals and speed filtering by means of a two-dimensional FFT by comparing output signals of overlapping lines of antennas which correspond to the bundled antenna beam.

22. The method according to claim 21, characterised by

making a speed correction, derived from the temporal offset between

the two transmitted signals and speed filtering by means of a two-dimensional FFT by comparing output signals of two received signals.