Automotive interference statistics and their effect on radar detector

Millimetre-wave frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radars are at present widely deployed in the autonomous vehicles. The growing usage of such sensors, as a vital part of a robust future autonomous sensing system, sees the potential for significant increase in mutual interference and adverse effects on sensor operation. Effective target detection in the background of interference requires knowledge of the interference statistics. In the case that such statistics are found to be similar to that of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN), then classical well-established detection techniques can be applied. Conversely, if statistics are found to be different, traditional techniques (matched filtering) will not be optimal. Here, a statistical analysis of mutual interference within an FMCW victim radar is presented. The majority of cases show a low correlation between the interference pulses received at the victim radar, with close to a Gaussian distribution. Some specific cases show a high correlation between the interference pulses in the victim radar chirps with a sinusoidal-like distribution, which degrades the victim radar’s detection performance. The presented analysis is validated by experimental data for various interference cases.