Automotive Radar Sensors – Transmit Signal Analysis and Inference Tests

Road safety is a global challenge at present and will be in the future. Automotive radar has become a keyword in this area and pushes again a step forward to increase driving comfort, crash prevention and even automated driving. Driver assistance systems which are supported by radar are already common. Most assistant systems are increasing the drivers comfort by collision warning systems, blind-spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control, lane-change assistance, rear cross-traffic alerts and back-up parking assistance.

Today's 24 GHz, 77 GHz and 79 GHz radar sensors clearly need the capability to distinguish between different objects and offer high range resolution. That is possible with increased signal bandwidth. Also, these radar systems need to cope with interference of many kinds like the one from other cars radars. In the automotive radar market, high performance and reliability combined with low unit size and price are mandatory. A single car may carry more than 10 sensors. These radars shall not interfere with each other or any other device. It follows that test and measurement of such radar sensors need to be just as fast, as reliable, cost-effective, and straight forward to use during development as well as in production.

This Application Note highlights signal measurements and analysis of automotive radars that are crucial during the development and verification stages. Particular emphasis is placed on a setup to verify the functionality of a radar in case of radio interference.

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