Joint Millimeter-Wave Communication and Radar for Automotive Applications

Vehicular radar and communication are the two primary means of using radio frequency (RF) signals in transportation systems. Automotive radars provide high-resolution sensing using proprietary waveforms in millimeter wave (mmWave) bands and vehicular communications allow vehicles to exchange safety messages or raw sensor data. Both the techniques can be used for applications such as forward collision warning, cooperative adaptive cruise control, and pre-crash applications. The project aims at developing a mmWave vehicular joint system that exploits the same waveform for both communication and radar operations, thus allowing hardware reuse. The use of a standard mmWave waveform, which provides access to a large bandwidth, will lead to significant advantages in terms of higher data rates for communication and better accuracy/resolution for radar operation compared with approaches based on sub-6 GHz frequencies. The initial work was to propose the idea of using IEEE 802.11ad for a joint vehicular communication and radar system. This allows us to exploit the same spectrum and to leverage shared hardware based on the mmWave consumer WLAN standard. The approach is reasonable because the most prevalent vehicular communication standard, dedicated short-range communications (DSRC), is based on the WLAN standard. This project proposes to refine previously developed algorithms and develop a further framework and associated algorithm to better achieve vehicular radar and communication objectives. These algorithms shall be used for designing modified IEEE 802.11ad and associated processing techniques (e.g., by exploiting sparsity) that permit both radar and communication functionalities in a multi-target scenario. The results will allow insights about how to design an optimal joint waveform for different vehicular scenarios to meet the continuously growing performance requirements of a more advanced assisted driving and future autonomous driving.

• Record URL:
  http://ctr.utexas.edu/research/d-stop/research/projects/

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT13-G-UTC58

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Project Managers:

  Bhat, Chandra

• Performing Organizations:

  Data-Supported Transportation Operations and Planning Center

  University of Texas at Austin
  Austin, TX  United States  78701
• Principal Investigators:

  Heath, Robert

• Start Date: 20170501
• Expected Completion Date: 20190531
• Actual Completion Date: 20190531
• Source Data: 137

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automated highways; Dedicated short range communications; Intelligent vehicles; Millimeter wave communication systems; Radio frequency; Wireless communication systems
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01634951
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Data-Supported Transportation Operations and Planning Center
• Contract Numbers: DTRT13-G-UTC58
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: May 18 2017 8:52PM