Radar Signature of a Micro-Doppler generating Soft-Target for Automotive Pre-Crash Systems

Precise perception of the surrounding environment with high-resolution radar sensors is a vital aspect in the development of automotive safety systems for pre-crash scenarios. It is necessary to determine the kinematic and extent states of nearby target vehicles for active safety systems to avoid collisions by either braking, steering or for passive predictive systems to lessen the impact. In addition to the object parameters, the micro-Doppler signatures generated by rotating wheels can be employed to extract object parameters, such as the position and orientation of the target vehicle before the collision with the ego vehicle. To ensure reproducible and safe crash experiments, a soft-target with a wheel suspension has been constructed and is presented in this paper to provide more vehicle-like radar detections during driving scenarios. This paper analyses the comparability of radar signature between the soft-target and a real vehicle utilizing radar measurements.