System Architecture for Adaptive Radar Sensors

Despite the fact of permanently increasing road traffic, the number and the severity of accidents have been reduced thanks to passive and active safety systems. These systems protect road users before and during traffic accidents. Driver assistance systems inform the driver about potentially dangerous situations and intend to bring him back into the loop. The key to reliable warning and intervention lies in the performance of the sensor system. Reliable object information requires the development of intelligent sensor systems. This article describes the architecture for an adaptive radar sensor subsystem. The architecture allows the configuration of the radar sensors dependent on the traffic situation. For this purpose, the bandwidth of the radar sensors is adjusted by means of ego vehicle speed and information about tracked objects (position and speed). Furthermore the approach improves the radar signal processing by searching objects in the radar spectrum.