Hardware modeling for interference between automotive radars

Current Advanced Driver Assistance Systems use radar sensors to provide functions such as Adaptive Cruise Control. As an example, consider one vehicle driving behind another one on a highway. In order to automatically brake or accelerate, one radar sensor (victim) mounted on the frontal part of the vehicle is continuously transmitting signals to measure the velocity V and distance R of the vehicle ahead (target). Those transmitted signals are reflected by the targets and received back in the victim radar sensor with an amplitude proportional to 1/R^2.

If another vehicle, also equipped with a radar sensor (interferer) in the frontal part, drives in the next lane at a distance R, this sensor will also interact in the scenario transmitting signals of the same type. Those interfering signals will be received by the victim radar with an amplitude proportional to 1/R. As a result, the victim radar is not able to recognize between the received backscattered signals from targets and the received signals that come directly from the interferer.

Because the power of the received signal due to the interferer is larger compared to the power of the received signal due to the target, circuit components of the victim radar, such as mixers and amplifiers, could be driven into the non-ideal range causing effects like clipping, saturation, unwanted intermodulation products, etc. The purpose of this master thesis is to model and simulate these hardware effects.