Electrically scanned millimeter-wave radar with antenna switching

A simple and small electronically scanned millimeter‐wave automotive radar is considered as a forward‐looking sensor for an adaptive cruise control system. The transceiver for the present radar consists of one transmitter and one receiver, and three transmitting antennas and three receiving antennas are switched. To infer the direction of the object to be detected, ESPRIT, a superresolution method, is used in order to achieve a wide field of view and high resolution simultaneously with small size. To confirm the operation of the radar and to make a performance evaluation in a real environment, a radar was fabricated using the new configuration and signal processing algorithm. Experiments confirmed that a field of view of more than 20°, an azimuthal resolution of less than 2°, and a detection updating period of 10 Hz were realized simultaneously. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 3, 89(1): 10–20, 2006; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjc.20184