Radar system and method for optimizing radar detection of objects

摘要

Means for optimising detection of objects by a radar system comprising a sparse array antenna comprising a plurality of antenna elements each configured to receive a signal 300 based on reflection of an emitted radar wave on at least one object. The method comprising obtaining at least one vector representing the spatial arrangement of the plurality of antenna elements; for each one of the at least one vector, determining a subset 303 of antenna elements forming a minimum redundancy sub-vector; determining a mask 306 based on the at least one sub-vector thus formed; and computing a radar image (Fig.5b) based on the mask (Fig.5a) and the vector, thereby optimizing object detection. Determining the mask may further comprise obtaining a correlation matrix 304 based on the sub-vector, computing a radar image by applying an array signal algorithm to said matrix, and comparing values of the energy of the radar image with a predetermined threshold. The threshold may be based on the minimum gap between the main and side lobes. The sparse array may be square or rectangular in shape and represented by either one or two one-dimension vectors respectively.