Real-Time Synthetic Aperture Radar for Automotive Embedded Systems

Advanced driver assistance systems and automated driving applications use radar sensors for different safety features. High resolution in azimuth dimension using radar can facilitate these applications (e.g. parking). However, these safety critical applications are realized on embedded systems with finite memory and computational power and need to react in real-time for passenger safety. With synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signal processing, it is possible to get a higher resolution representation of the environment. In this paper, we discuss a real-time embedded system realization of a SAR concept suitable for automotive applications. The computational and memory consumption aspects of the system concept are discussed and verified through real-world measurements in an integrated automotive microcontroller.