Radar for Fully Autonomous Driving

Book excerpt: This is the first book to bring together the increasingly complex radar automotive technologies and tools being explored and utilized in the development of fully autonomous vehicles – technologies and tools now understood to be an essential need for the field to fully mature. The book presents state-of-the-art knowledge as shared by the best and brightest experts working in the automotive radar industry today -- leaders who have “been there and done that.” Each chapter is written as a standalone "master class" with the authors, seeing the topic through their eyes and experiences. Where beneficial, the chapters reference one another but can otherwise be read in any order desired, making the book an excellent go-to reference for a particular topic or review you need to understand. You’ll get a big-picture tour of the key radar needs for fully autonomous vehicles, and how achieving these needs is complicated by the automotive environment’s dense scenes, number of possible targets of interest, and mix of very large and very small returns. You’ll then be shown the challenges from – and mitigations to – radio frequency interference (RFI), an ever-increasing challenge as the number of vehicles with radars – and radars per vehicle grow. The book also dives into the impacts of weather on radar performance, providing you with insights gained from extensive real-world testing. You are then taken through the integration and systems considerations, especially regarding safety, computing needs, and testing. Each of these areas is influenced heavily by the needs of fully autonomous vehicles and are open areas of research and development. With this authoritative volume you will understand: * How to engage with radar designers (from a system integrator / OEM standpoint); * How to structure and set requirements for automotive radars; * How to address system safety needs for radars in fully autonomous vehicles; * How to assess weather impact on the radar and its ability to support autonomy; * How to include weather effects into specifications for radars. This is an essential reference for engineers currently in the autonomous vehicle arena and/or working in automotive radar development, as well as engineers and leaders in adjacent radar fields needing to stay abreast of the rapid developments in this exciting and dynamic field of research and development.