Scattering Properties of Antennas used For Stimulating Radar Sensors

Radar sensors are becoming standard equipment in modern cars. They are an integral part of functionalities provided by modern advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Over-the-air (OTA) stimulation of the radar sensor can be used to realize testing of such driving functions on a test rig for ready-to-drive cars. Such test rigs provide many sources for an undesired scattering of the radar sensors' output signal. One of them is the radar target stimulator (RTS) antenna system used to simulate synthetic targets for the sensor. This paper investigates a measurement approach to characterize the clutter generated by different antennas used to stimulate radar targets. By transforming wideband frequency domain (FD) measurements to the time domain (TD), we can analyze the spatial distribution of the radar signal scattering and the antenna properties. Knowing the scattering introduced by different antennas, we can conclude their usage for RTS applications.