The Fourier Tracing Approach for Modeling Automotive Radar Sensors

Abstract

The certification of autonomous driving by means of virtual testing methods is limited by the accuracy of simulated perception sensors, especially radar. This work presents a proof-of-concept implementation of Fourier tracing, a novel approach for synthesizing radar measurements of a virtual scene. Fourier tracing adapts ray tracing techniques from image synthesis to directly simulate a 3D periodogram of the range, range rate, and azimuth domains. Unlike previous approaches, Fourier tracing does not require computationally expensive FFT calculations and is specifically designed to capture the main characteristics of radar measurements, including interference and multi-path reflections. Our findings show that Fourier tracing captures key radar sensor performance parameters.