Harmonic clutter recognition and suppression for automotive radar sensors

Abstract

In this article, we propose a novel harmonic clutter recognition and suppression method to overcome the deterioration of a target-or vehicle-detection performance due to harmonic clutters. Although several studies have been performed on the reflection and diffraction on road surfaces for automotive radar sensors, most of them did not consider the case where metallic structures such as iron tunnels with greater reflection are densely distributed. The proposed method measures the periodicity of harmonic clutters by analyzing the spectral characteristics of the received radar signal with various road conditions. The proposed method can successfully recognize harmonic clutters. In addition, experimental results show that early detection of a target vehicle in an iron tunnel under adaptive cruise control is improved using the proposed clutter suppression method.

Road Environment Recognition for Automotive FMCW RADAR Systems Through Convolutional Neural Network

“…Figure 1 illustrates a block diagram of radar signal processing for autonomous vehicles. The road environment was classified using s n m in (9) as an input for a CNN, which utilized N receiving antennas and multiple scans for this purpose. Finally, the desired target can be detected through the clutter suppression and target detection algorithms that are specifically suitable for each road environment [9]- [11].…”

“…Thus, the target detection performance degrades, which can lead to serious accidents. Therefore, it is necessary to apply a target detection algorithm and clutter suppression algorithm suitable for each road environment by recognizing the road environment in advance [9]- [11]. In addition, in [9], a method of recognizing and suppressing harmonic clutter in an iron tunnel environment is proposed.…”

“…Therefore, it is necessary to apply a target detection algorithm and clutter suppression algorithm suitable for each road environment by recognizing the road environment in advance [9]- [11]. In addition, in [9], a method of recognizing and suppressing harmonic clutter in an iron tunnel environment is proposed. Moreover, in [10], a method is proposed for the effective suppression of the periodic clutter in an iron tunnel.…”

Classification and Spectral Mapping of Stationary and Moving Objects in Road Environments Using FMCW Radar

“…Recently, studies have been conducted in the time-frequency domain, instead of the frequency domain. There has been research on the recognition of iron tunnels by measuring the degree of spectral spreading through the analysis of the spectrum characteristics of the received radar signal in iron tunnel [14], and harmonic clutter suppression by measuring the periodicity of harmonic clutters using spectrum [15], [16]. In this paper, for supporting the construction of the road map containing various objects, we focus on stationary and moving object classification.…”

Periodic clutter suppression in iron road structures for automotive radar systems

“…Above all, only a few studies have been conducted on radar clutter in road environments, where metallic structures with intense reflections are densely distributed [5, 6]. When a radar‐equipped vehicle travels through specific road structures made of iron such as tunnels, soundproof walls, and guardrails, the radar detection performance can be degraded [7–9]. Since these road structures consist of periodic steel frames, they periodically generate unwanted echo signals called radar clutter [8–10].…”