Conformal Antennas for a Wide View Angle in Automotive Radar

The angular view of a single radar sensor can be successfully enlarged with the help of conformal antenna arrays. This way a round-view of the environment can be achieved what is crucial for autonomous driving. The advantages of these systems and the number of necessary channels are investigated in this work. Therefore, different setups were designed and tested at 24 GHz considering different criteria like view angle, unambiguous range and gain over the whole field of view. Beneath pattern measurements, radar similar tests were done in an antenna measurement chamber. The work shows that conformal antennas can widen the view angle of a radar, e. g. an angular view >180° was possible with a resolution of 14° for a 4 × 8 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system (4 transmitters, 8 receivers). However, enough transmit and receive channels are necessary to cover a suitable view angle.