A Machine Learning Based 77 GHz Radar Target Classification for Autonomous Vehicles

77 GHz mmW radar is a powerful essential sensor for the state-of-art and future autonomous vehicles. Besides the traditional intended functionality of mmW radars in target detection and measuring its range and speed, this paper shows that by utilizing the knowledge of targets' statistical RCS information, over 90% classification accuracy can be achieved for distant targets (range over 50m). For advanced radars with beam-steering capabilities, the classification accuracy can reach to more than 99% in the near range. In this study a machine learning technique based on artificial neural networks (ANN) is used for the data classification problem.