A MULTI-LAYER PERCEPTRON APPLIED TO NUMBER OF TARGET INDICATION FOR DIRECTION-OF-ARRIVAL ESTIMATION IN AUTOMOTIVE RADAR SENSORS

A multi-layer perceptron for indicating the number of targets present in a range-velocity cell of automotive radar sensors is examined and compared with a state-of-the-art approach based on a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test. The multi-target indication is typically used for direction-of-arrival estimation to decide whether resolution in the angular domain is necessary. We focus on the practically relevant challenge of deciding between a single-target and a two-target scenario. Compared to the state-of-the-art approach which requires a preceding maximum likelihood DoA estimate and a precise array model, the proposed multi-layer perceptron directly operates on the single-snapshot spatial covariance matrix estimate. The array model inherently is learned by the network during the training process. The evaluation of the MLP in terms of classification accuracy shows that a performance similar to the Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test is achieved.