Fingerprints of the Automotive Radar Scattering of Passenger Cars and Vans

The radar scattering characteristics of extended objects are an important parameter for perception and tracking algorithms in automated driving tasks. Therefore, high-fidelity sensor models are required to simulate and evaluate typical driving scenarios in virtual testing applications. While the general analysis of typical scattering centers of passenger cars is well studied, there are only a few publicly available reports that analyze specific features of the scattering characteristics of different vehicle types. Hence, this work presents detection distributions derived from systematic measurements for six different vehicle types, conducted with a commercial automotive radar on a proving ground. In particular, the contribution of underbody reflections to the respective radar signatures is analyzed, which are caused by multipath propagation via the road surface. The measurements reveal distinctive differences between the scattering characteristics of different vehicles, which are attributed to the respective underbody geometry.