Periodic clutter suppression in iron road structures for automotive radar systems

Abstract

In this study, the authors propose a periodic clutter suppression method in iron road structures for automotive radar systems. Specific road structures made of iron such as tunnels, soundproof walls, and guardrails have periodic steel frames that generate unwanted reflected signals called radar clutter. This clutter degrades the detection performance of an automotive radar and leads to misdetection of targets. Therefore, efficient signal processing is required to mitigate the adverse effect of clutter within those iron structures. Since the spacings between steel frames are uniform, beat frequencies corresponding to them also appear at regular intervals. This phenomenon is maintained in each radar scan when a vehicle travels in the iron structures. Thus, they suggest an effective periodic clutter suppression method using the relationship between adjacent radar scans. Their proposed clutter suppression scheme was applied to radar signals obtained from the iron road structures and successfully suppressed the periodic clutter.