A ray launching approach for modeling an FMCW radar system

Virtual testing can improve safety and quality of driver assistance systems. However, for the accuracy of the whole simulation, the realism of the virtual sensors is crucial. This paper describes a method for simulating an automotive FMCW radar from the wave transmission up to the intermediate frequency signal. The wave propagation is simulated using geometrical optics and ray launching. To obtain high fidelity, antenna power patterns of transmitter and receiver, reflection, and ray divergence due to curved surfaces are included. Moreover the model inherently includes interference, limited resolution and energy conservation. In contrast to most previous work, our model is deployed in the detailed environment of a driving simulator. Finally, the implementation of the ray launcher using the GPU accelerated OptiX ray tracing engine proves real-time performance and comparable results to recorded measurements.