Tangential Velocity Estimation Using Separated Non-Coherent Automotive Radar Array

Automotive radar is the main sensor enabling autonomous driving and active safety features. It is required to provide high-resolution information on the vehicle’s surroundings, accurately localize obstacles, and estimate their velocity in two dimensions. Conventional automotive radars operating in the far-field regime estimate only the target’s radial velocity and cannot obtain its tangential velocity. However, the near-field propagation conditions allow the tangential radar target velocity estimation. This work leverages our previous identifiability study, where the conditions for the tangential velocity estimation have been stated, and proposes an iterative algorithm for tangential velocity estimation in automotive near-field scenarios using a non-coherent separated sensor array. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated, and its efficiency and near-field synthetic aperture (NFSA) dependency is demonstrated via simulations.