Enhancing Perception for Intelligent Vehicles via Electromagnetic Leakage

Accurate perception of intelligent vehicles is critical for the safe operation of autonomous vehicles. However, current perception methods often struggle to effectively detect intelligent vehicles when obstacles block their field of view. Collaborative perception, although attracting considerable attention, presents challenges in terms of privacy and data trust. In this study, we present a novel design for Enhancing Intelligent Vehicle (EIV), a cost-effective and comprehensive perception system for intelligent vehicles. We discovered that during the process of memory caching raw sensing data in the intelligent vehicle’s system-on-chip (SOC), continuous fluctuating currents inside the memory result in the emission of Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR). As a result, intelligent vehicles actively expose themselves on the electromagnetic spectrum. EIV is based on a set of specially designed antenna arrays that scan the spectrum and utilize a joint Kalman filtering algorithm to enhance EMR signals. The micro-Doppler signature of each EMR signal is then analyzed to identify signals from intelligent vehicles and construct a vehicle database. A multi-antenna joint estimation algorithm is also designed to further estimate the position, distance, and direction of the target vehicle. Our experiments demonstrate that EIV offers advantages in terms of timeliness, robustness, and accuracy.