Millimeter-wave multi-port radar sensors for next generation autonomous intelligent cruise control systems

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Automotive radar is a key technology for Autonomous Intelligent Cruise Control (AICC) systems, especiallydue to its inherent advantages like weather independence and direct acquisition of range and velocity whencompared to alternative sensors like video, laser and ultrasonic. The AICC systems will relieve the driver a partof his task by keeping him to a safe distance and warning him in critical situations, making driving lessstrenuous, especially in flowing traffic. Additionally, radar offers to the vehicle manufacturers the stylisticadvantage of mounting behind a plastic bumper.Recently the 76 - 77 GHz millimeter-wave band has been allocated world-wide to unlicensed vehicle radarsystems. Two main tasks are essential to achieve our research objective, the development of innovative,accurate and low-cost radar sensors: (i) the design, fabrication and characterisation of new millimeter-wavecomponents and (ii) the design and validation of new radar system architectures and signal processingtechniques.Millimeter-wave radar front-end design will take advantage of our research team strong expertise inmillimeter-wave fabrication techniques and multi-port technology. This technology will be used in bothantenna arrays and down-conversion modules. The integrated antenna array will perform an electronic beamscanning of a limited sector using a multi-port circuit and four patch antennas. The innovative multi-portquadrature down-conversion technique will improve radar measurement accuracy due to its recognized phasemeasurement precision. In addition, comparing to conventional mixing techniques, a very good suppression ofharmonics and spurious products will be obtained with a reduced millimeter-wave local oscillator power.Specific digital signal processing techniques related to the multi-port heterodyne architecture will be alsodeveloped to obtain accurate range and velocity measurements especially in a multi-target environment.