Automotive Radar — From First Efforts to Future Systems

Although the beginning of research on automotive radar sensors goes back to the 1960s, automotive radar has remained one of the main drivers of innovation in millimeter wave technology over the past two decades. Today, millions of sensors are produced each year, which was made possible by inexpensive and mature millimeter wave technology. The technology maturity, in turn, enables research to be carried out on systems that are considerably more complex and powerful than was possible just a few years ago.

The focus of research has thus shifted from purely hardware-oriented and device-level topics to sophisticated millimeter wave systems and RF signal processing topics. This opens up new research topics such as digital modulation schemes, radar networks, radar imaging, and machine learning. In this review paper, we sketch the path from the very beginning through the state of the art with sophisticated multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna arrays and mature assembly and interconnect concepts to today's key research topics of automotive radar.