Dielectric Material Characterization of Traffic Objects in Automotive Radar Applications

A safe and comprehensive experimental verification of automotive radars is a significant challenge in the development process of autonomous driving technology. This challenge is an inevitable part of testing, whether in simulation or conventional real-road testing. In order to rely on software-in-the-loop (SIL) modeling and simulation, the test environment have to be modeled as realistic as the real test environment. One step in more realistic test environment modeling is characterizing the electromagnetic properties of the environmental materials in automotive radar frequency bands. Therefore, studying the radar reflectivity and scattering of traffic objects is one of the critical tasks for more realistic test environment modeling. This paper demonstrates a free-space measurement setup for dielectric material characterization based on the measured scattering parameters. In this procedure, deterministic tests are conducted to investigate the scattering parameters of the different traffic materials and calculate the effective dielectric constant using Muller’s algorithm as well as their angle-dependent backscattering properties.