Radar Cross Section Enhancing Structures for Automotive Radars

As automotive radar and driver assistance systems prevail, weak scattering targets such as pedestrians and bicycles can be applied with radar cross section (RCS) enhancing structures to improve road safety. Low-profile structures, which comprise straight and ring-shaped ridges mounted on metal plates, are developed in the 24 GHz band to provide the broad-angle retroreflective feature. They form dihedral corner reflectors and elevate backscattering for oblique incidences. Statistic measures are developed to assess the RCS enhancing performance. Since ring and straight ridges react differently toward oblique incidences, a web-like hybrid design is proposed. It shows that substantial backscattering increases can be achieved for incidences of different angles and polarizations.