Over-the-Air Vehicle-in-the-Loop Test System for Installed-Performance Evaluation of Automotive Radar Systems in a Virtual Environment

Automotive millimeter-wave radar systems are key to automated and connected driving technologies. It is necessary to validate their functional performance in the installed state thoroughly, reliably, and efficiently under realistic conditions before deploying them in real-world traffic. Field-operational tests are the ultimate phase of verification and validation of radar sensors. This approach offers the highest degree of realism yet consuming enormous resources and associated risks. Additionally, these drive tests are neither sufficiently reproducible nor controllable. On the other hand, computer simulation-based closed-loop test approaches overcome these limitations, but lack physically realistic environments. Therefore, over-the-air testing approaches have gained great relevance in this context. In earlier work, we proposed an advanced system concept using an over-the-air vehicle-in-the-loop (OTA/ViL) approach for evaluating the installed performance of fully operational automotive radar systems. In this paper, we present the complete test system in a closed loop in a virtual electromagnetic environment with realistic radar target echoes. An exemplary traffic scenario is considered to validate the performance of the implemented test system. Initial measurements provide promising results.