Thorough analysis of multipath propagation effects for radar applications in the vehicle interior

The authors present a method to determine the amount of reflected power of a radar target in a multi-scattering environment based on a numerical approach. In the current research, a radar sensor is mounted in the vehicle interior in order to detect children which are accidentally left behind on the rear bench of a car. Due to the multi-scattering environment of the vehicle interior, multiple waves received at the CW radar are interfering constructively and destructively. In this paper the amount of power purely reflected by the child and by the environment is separated and analyzed.