Calibration and Signal Processing of Polarimetric Radar Data in Automotive Applications

With increasing levels of vehicle automation, the requirements for the sensors that are used for environment perception are rising at least as steadily. In automotive radars, the capability to perceive polarimetric information inspired some recent work to exploit this aspect in order to improve perception of static and dynamic surroundings. Such utilization requires a well-calibrated radar system. This paper demonstrates how to achieve the necessary stability in the scattering information of an automotive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) millimeter wave radar. The parameters of a fully polarimetric calibration are derived based on pole and dihedral target measurements in an automated test facility. Furthermore, the impact on the polarimetric quantities estimation due to mounting the radar behind a radome is analyzed.