Estimating Speed Using a Side-Looking Single-Radar Vehicle Detector

Abstract

This paper presents a side-looking single-beam microwave vehicle detector (VD) system for estimation of per-vehicle speed and length. The proposed VD system is equipped with a 2-D range Doppler frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar using a squint angle. The associated Fourier processor uses an inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) algorithm to extract range and speed data for each vehicle using a single-beam FMCW radar. The simulation and experimental results show accurate estimations of vehicle speed and length. The measurement errors of speed and length were approximately +/- 4 km/h and +/- 1 m, respectively. The proposed method has excellent detection capability for small moving targets, such as bikes and pedestrians, at speeds down to 5 km/h. A commercial 10.6-GHz radar with signal processing modifications was used in the experiments.