Method for the Analysis of Bumpers as Dielectric Slab Waveguides in Automotive Radar Applications

A method to analyze automotive bumpers in radar applications as a composition of geometrically simpler flat and bent dielectric slab waveguides is presented. Based on the known exact electromagnetic propagation solutions for the slab waveguides and on mode matching techniques for obtaining coupling coefficients at the interfaces, an approach for the analysis of more general 2-D bumpers is described. Results obtained following this approach are compared with fields calculated numerically. The fields are showing a good accordance to each other. This approach is a powerful tool to get a deeper understanding which influences a Radome takes onto the radar performance of an automotive radar system.