Polarimetric Radar Cross-Sections of Pedestrians at Automotive Radar Frequencies

Simulation of radar cross-sections (RCS) of pedestrians at automotive radar frequencies forms a key tool for software verification test beds for advanced driver assistance systems. Two commonly used simulation methods are: the computationally simple scattering center model of dynamic humans; and the shooting and bouncing ray technique based on geometric optics. The latter technique is more accurate but due to its computational complexity, it is usually used only for modeling scattered returns of still human poses. In this work, we combine the two methods in a linear regression framework to accurately estimate the scattering coefficients or reflectivies of point scatterers in a realistic automotive radar signal model which we subsequently use to simulate range-time, Doppler-time and range-Doppler radar signatures. The simulated signatures show a normalized mean square error below 10% and a structural similarity above 81% with respect to measurement results generated with an automotive radar at 77 GHz.