Influence of Ramp Timing Dither on Modulation-Based Radar Target Simulators

Abstract

With modulation-based radar target simulators, complex traffic scenarios can be simulated for automotive radars at low costs. Yet the simulation principle relies on the timings of the chirp-sequence frequency modulated continous waveform. Since small timing variations can be purposely introduced on the radar's waveform e.g. for interference mitigation techniques, the assumption of ideal timings could be violated. Therefore, this paper investigates the influences of ramp timing deviations on the target simulation. A signal model for radar timing variations for modulation-based simulators is presented. Furthermore, the influence of ramp timings on the resulting signal-to-noise ratio of simulated target responses is derived and verified by measurements.