Signal Synthesis for a Hardware in the Loop Radar Target Simulator

The topics electric mobility and autonomous driving are at the moment in the main focus of the automotive industry. While electric mobility demands solutions for energy storage and supply, autonomous driving needs sensors with a high resolution and intensive signal processing to have a accurate perception and interpretation of the car's surroundings. To ensure the functionality of the sensors in combination with the signal post processing, long test drives need to be performed. Reducing the amount of test drives outside on public streets will result in faster development cycles and lower costs. To compensate the lower amount of kilometers driven, test are performed in a labratory with controllable conditions. As a result, an enviroment that can simulate a dynamic and realistic world to the autonoumous car's sensors is needed. To fulfill this requirement a hardware-in-the-loop approach is chosen, where the sensors themselves are stimulated by simulators like they would be in the outside world. In the area of radar sensors, as they are used in cars to detect obstacles, this means a target simulator is chosen that can receive the transmit signal of the radar, manipulate it and send it back towards the radar to give the impression of a real target.

The aim of this work is the creation of a software solution, which will calculate all modifications of the transmit signal necessary to create a desired scenario. This way the software can be used to synthesize arbitrary traffic scenarios and project them into a radar sensor.