Predicting Millimeter Wave Radar Spectra for Autonomous Navigation

摘要

Millimeter Wave (MMW) radars are currently used as range measuring devices in applications such as automotive driving aids (Langer and Jochem, 1996), (Rohling and Mende, 1996), the mapping of mines (Brooker , 2005) and autonomous field robotics (Brooker, 2001), (Langer, 1996). This recent interest is largely due to the advantages MMW radars offer over other range measuring sensors, as their performance is less affected by dust, fog, rain or snow and ambient lighting conditions. MMW radars can provide received signal strength values, at all discrete range intervals, within the working range of the radar (Clark and Durrant-Whyte, 1997), (Scheding , 2002). The received power versus range spectra hence contain useful range to target information, but are also corrupted by noise. User defined stochastic algorithms can then be implemented, which exploit this rich data to improve object detection and mapping performance. This is in contrast to many other range measuring devices which typically internally threshold received signals, to provide single hard decisions only, on the estimated range to objects (Mullane, 2007).