# BoostRad: Enhancing Object Detection by Boosting Radar Reflections

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.17861 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17861/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Apr 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [Deep Multi-modal Object Detection and Semantic Segmentation for Autonomous Driving: Datasets, Methods, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.07830/) (2019)
- [CenterFusion: Center-based Radar and Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04841/) (2020)
- [RADIATE: A Radar Dataset for Automotive Perception in Bad Weather](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.09076/) (2020)
- [Raw High-Definition Radar for Multi-Task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10646/) (2021)
- [RadarScenes: A Real-World Radar Point Cloud Data Set for Automotive Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02493/) (2021)
- [CARRADA Dataset: Camera and Automotive Radar with Range-Angle-Doppler Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01456/) (2020)
- [RADDet: Range-Azimuth-Doppler based Radar Object Detection for Dynamic Road Users](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.00363/) (2021)
- [RODNet: A Real-Time Radar Object Detection Network Cross-Supervised by Camera-Radar Fused Object 3D Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05150/) (2021)
- [2D Car Detection in Radar Data with PointNets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08414/) (2019)
- [CramNet: Camera-Radar Fusion with Ray-Constrained Cross-Attention for Robust 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09267/) (2022)
- [aiMotive Dataset: A Multimodal Dataset for Robust Autonomous Driving with Long-Range Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09445/) (2022)
- [Probabilistic Oriented Object Detection in Automotive Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05310/) (2020)
- [Pointillism: Accurate 3D bounding box estimation with multi-radars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04440/) (2022)
- [Object Detection and 3D Estimation via an FMCW Radar Using a Fully Convolutional Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.05394/) (2019)
- [Using Machine Learning to Detect Ghost Images in Automotive Radar](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.05280/) (2020)
- [Radar-Camera Sensor Fusion for Joint Object Detection and Distance Estimation in Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.08428/) (2020)
- [Radar-based Road User Classification and Novelty Detection with Recurrent Neural Network Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11703/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [RadSimReal: Bridging the Gap Between Synthetic and Real Data in Radar Object Detection With Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18150/) (2024)
- [DoppDrive: Doppler-Driven Temporal Aggregation for Improved Radar Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.12330/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Automotive radars have an important role in autonomous driving systems. The main challenge in automotive radar detection is the radar's wide point spread function (PSF) in the angular domain that causes blurriness and clutter in the radar image. Numerous studies suggest employing an 'end-to-end' learning strategy using a Deep Neural Network (DNN) to directly detect objects from radar images. This approach implicitly addresses the PSF's impact on objects of interest. In this paper, we propose an alternative approach, which we term "Boosting Radar Reflections" (BoostRad). In BoostRad, a first DNN is trained to narrow the PSF for all the reflection points in the scene. The output of the first DNN is a boosted reflection image with higher resolution and reduced clutter, resulting in a sharper and cleaner image. Subsequently, a second DNN is employed to detect objects within the boosted reflection image. We develop a novel method for training the boosting DNN that incorporates domain knowledge of radar's PSF characteristics. BoostRad's performance is evaluated using the RADDet and CARRADA datasets, revealing its superiority over reference methods.