Development of RF Hardware and Point Cloud Processing Method for Phased Array Millimeter Wave Radar

Abstract

The development of smart transportation has raised the demand for perception and detection of vehicle targets on the road, and compared to traditional methods, such as video cameras, millimeter wave radar applications are becoming increasingly widespread. This article mainly focuses on the research of phased array millimeter wave radar, introduces the principles of beamforming and scanning, designs microstrip array antennas, and develops radar hardware RF boards using a four-chip cascade approach. Further elaborating on the data acquisition process of phased array millimeter wave radar in detecting vehicle targets, based on the obtained point cloud data, combined with the target data and point cloud characteristics under phased array millimeter wave radar, a target point cloud clustering method using the concept of region growing is proposed. Finally, through actual testing and comparison with other clustering algorithms, the superiority of this method in clustering accuracy and processing time was verified. This method can effectively solve the problem of two targets easily converging into one target when they are close, further improving the detection and tracking performance of phased array millimeter wave radar for vehicle targets.