To characterize atmospheric turbulence, the Doppler moments are estimated by weather radars. However, moment accuracy is highly sensitive to radar transmission parameters such as pulse repetition time (T_s) and number of pulses (N_p), which affect Doppler ambiguity and estimation variance. Traditional fixed-parameter radars face trade-offs between aliasing and measurement precision. This paper proposes an adaptive radar framework that dynamically adjusts T_s and N_p on a per-scan basis to improve Doppler moment estimation at a single resolution cell level. Inspired by the Fully Adaptive Radar (FAR) concept, the method also includes a novel multi-lag Doppler width estimation scheme. Results demonstrate enhanced estimation accuracy, enabling better responsiveness to localized and non-stationary weather conditions.

The challenge of polarimetric coupling in phased array weather radars is explained, along with the resulting requirements. For the first time, state-of-the-art mitigation techniques on the system, hardware and software level are discussed together along with their achievements and shortcomings. An outlook is made toward future developments and applications, including integrated weather sensing and communications.

In this article, the classification of dynamic vulnerable road users (VRUs) using polarimetric automotive radar is considered. To this end, a signal processing pipeline for polarimetric automotive MIMO radar is proposed, including a method to enhance angular resolution by combining data from all polarimetric channels. The proposed signal processing pipeline is applied to measurement data of three different types of VRUs and a car, collected with a custom automotive polarimetric radar, developed in collaboration with Huber+Suhner AG. Several polarimetric features are estimated from the range-velocity signatures of the measured targets and are subsequently analyzed. A Bayesian classifier and a convolutional neural network (CNN) using these estimated polarimetric features are proposed and their performance is compared against their single-polarized counterparts. It is found that for the Bayesian classifier, a significant increase in classification performance is achieved, compared to the same classifier using single polarized information. For the CNN-based classifier, utilizing the distribution of polarimetric features of the target’s range-velocity signatures also increases classification performance, compared to its single-polarized version. This shows that polarimetric information is valuable for classification of VRUs and objects of interest in automotive radar.

The problem of radar-based tracking of groups of people moving together and counting their numbers in indoor environments is considered here. A novel processing pipeline to track groups of people moving together and count their numbers is proposed and validated. The pipeline is specifically designed to deal with frequent changes of direction and stop-and-go movements typical of indoor activities. The proposed approach combines a tracker with a classifier to count the number of grouped people; this uses both spatial features extracted from range-azimuth (RA) maps and Doppler frequency features extracted with wavelet decomposition. Thus, the pipeline outputs over time both the location and the number of people present. The proposed approach is verified with experimental data collected with a 24-GHz frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar. It is shown that the proposed method achieves 93.15% accuracy in terms of counting the number of people and a tracking metric optimal subpattern assignment (OSPA) of 0.335. Furthermore, the performance is analyzed as a function of different relevant variables such as feature combinations and scenarios.

The problem of diminished unambiguous target velocity interval induced by the time-division-multiplex mode (TDM) of multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) automotive radar has been explored. A novel MIMO antenna array activation mode and a parametric approach for Doppler de-aliasing based on a two-step cross-entropy optimization are proposed. The TDM Doppler signal model has been derived, and a novel two-step cost function is proposed to achieve robust and efficient estimation. In contrast to the state-of-the-art method, the method proposed does not need multiple overlapped antennas and can resolve multiple targets in the same range and Doppler bins. The proposed method has been verified with numerical simulations with different parameter settings, as well as experimental data from a radar target simulator.

The role of radar for building situation awareness in (semi)autonomous vehicles is severely restricted by its low angular resolution. The physical size of the radar, which determines its antenna aperture size and thus the radar angular resolution, is often a subject of stringent limitations to physically fit the system in the vehicles. Multiple input multiple output systems are used to increase the achievable angular resolution, and these are often combined in the literature with algorithms inspired by synthetic aperture radar techniques that exploit the velocity of the vehicle itself for finer resolution. Some of the most common approaches are reviewed, in this context, with a specific focus on challenges for the implementation of data collected in real driving scenarios. Key experimental results using representative algorithms and driving data collected in the city of Delft, The Netherlands, are presented and discussed.

The feasibility of using hybrid additive manufacturing (AM) to produce low-cost, phased array antennas for SatCom applications is investigated in this work. A 4x2 planar array comprised of dielectric resonator antennas (DRAs) operating in the fundamental mode within the K-band SatCom downlink band (17.7-21.2 GHz) has been designed, fabricated and measured. The impact of print settings on the material properties is assessed and incorporated into the antenna design process. Manufactured prototypes of the single element and the planar array geometry are experimentally verified in terms of their scattering parame-ters and far-field radiation patterns. The potential of combining hybrid AM and DRA technologies for future mmWave phased array developments is highlighted by the presented results.

A novel approach for estimating the elevation-Doppler profiles for precipitation using phased array radars is presented. The proposed technique is parametric, where a semi-analytical model of the Power Spectral Density (PSD) as a function of the normalized Doppler velocities and the elevation profiles of the Doppler moments is used as a reference. The inverse problem of jointly estimating the Doppler moments at each elevation angle is addressed using the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). The proposed technique is compared with the traditional non-parametric techniques using synthetic radar echoes and shown to be superior to these traditional techniques.

The problem of enhancing angular resolution capability using a non-coherent radar network has been considered. A 2D-Localization approach based on block-FOCUSS is proposed to overcome the near-field effects. In this method, range-angle coupling due to the large baseline between radar units is taken into account. The performance of the proposed method is compared with two state-of-the-art direction-of-arrival estimation methods which are based on block-FOCUSS and block-OMP.

In this contribution, we analyze machine learning-assisted solutions to tackle real-time fault detection in large-scale active phased array antennas. The challenge of integrating the circuit component nonlinearities and mutual coupling effects in fault-finding methodologies is addressed. A novel machine learning (ML) solution based on an array theory-enhanced neural network (NN) is proposed. To address the practical constraints of large array measurements, sparse far-field (FF) measurements are considered. The method is experimentally verified by applying it to fault detection in a 64-element planar phased array prototype operating at 26 GHz with far-field measurements collected by a fixed high-speed multi-probe pattern acquisition setup, the Antenna Dome. Significant improvement in fault prediction performance over a conventional Genetic Algorithm (GA) based heuristic approach with improvements of up to 40%, 25%, and 20% in predicting 8-, 4-, and 2-element faults, respectively, is demonstrated. The robustness of the proposed performance with respect to the number of 3D spatial field sampling points is shown, offering efficient diagnostics with in-field pattern sampling compatibility and low hardware complexity.

Classification of human activities performed sequentially and with unconstrained durations using radar sensors has been studied in this work. A novel processing pipeline comprising a sequence segmentation stage, a segment processing stage, and a classification stage has been proposed to address this challenge. Specifically, the segmentation stage has been implemented by monitoring Rényi entropy for fluctuations in the radar data, with the entropy, derived from micro-Doppler spectrograms, functioning as a descriptive quantity of the activity being performed. The method has been experimentally verified on a challenging, publicly available dataset collected with a network of five simultaneously operating pulsed ultrawideband radars. Classification performance has been compared to reference works in the literature on the same dataset, and a test accuracy and macro F1-score of 89.3% and 82.0% have been, respectively, demonstrated.

The problem of enabling adaptive capabilities in the context of weather radar is considered in this paper. Inspired by the cognitive radar framework, an approach based on Reinforcement Learning (RL) is formulated to deal with the monitoring of multiple storm cells moving near a potential area of interest. The approach aims to dynamically adjust the radar waveform bandwidth, and consequently maximum measurable range and range resolution, in order to provide the best monitoring based on a purposely-defined reward function. The approach is successfully validated with a simulator developed in Python & StoneSoup. Results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms traditional fixed-scan ('sit and spin') strategies commonly used in weather radar operations.

The problem of estimating instantaneous distributed target velocity using noisy measurements by multiple asynchronous automotive radar sensors is investigated. Two novel neural networks (NNs)-based approaches are proposed to address the problem. Both NNs use the point cloud with radar detections as an input. In the first approach, a hybrid NN is designed to take a set of points inside a cluster as its input, extract spatial-dynamic features to be used as weights for each input point, and apply them to obtain a weighted least square (WLS) solution for instantaneous velocity estimation. To this end, dedicated loss functions are proposed to allow the model to predict weights that can follow a velocity profile curve satisfying target constraints. Moreover, a small offset in the radial velocity value of each point is applied to adjust errors in the sensor measurements. In the second approach, a deep NN is proposed that takes a set of points inside a cluster as its input and directly outputs velocity estimates. Both approaches have been verified experimentally using the large open-source automotive RadarScenes dataset. The results show a significant improvement in terms of mean absolute error in velocity estimation over the state-of-the-art alternative techniques. Moreover, the estimated velocity is used as an additional measurement value inside a target tracker. Results show that this can increase the performance of the tracker, especially during challenging scenarios such as abrupt changes in the velocity of the target.

This article offers a wide perspective of the research topic of orthogonal time–frequency space (OTFS)-based integrated radar–communication systems. OTFS modulation is a recently proposed evolution of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing that promises better Doppler tolerance and therefore is a firm candidate for future communications in high-mobility scenarios. As radar sensing is often present in these scenarios (urban mobility, drones), OTFS is also a firm candidate for multifunctional systems capable of communications and radar sensing. In this article, we present the state of the art of OTFS for integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), focusing on radar receiver and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) waveform design, and from this overview, we identify a set of open research challenges that are used to identify opportunities for research in the topic. It is shown that OTFS-based ISAC is an emerging topic with promising first results and plenty of room for growth.

The design, fabrication, and experimental validation of a gradient-index (GRIN) lens operating at 20 GHz is presented. Different realizations with and without matching layers at the input and output interfaces are compared. The lens design employs a semi-analytical approach to compute the desired permittivity distribution, which is realized using a periodic dielectric structure with a spatially modulated volumetric infill. The lens is manufactured via a multi-tool 3D printer utilizing two different dielectric materials for the core and matching layers, respectively. The lens design with and without the matching layer is experimentally verified. The comparison highlights the critical role of impedance matching at the interfaces, with the lens exhibiting superior performance when matching layers are incorporated. This work demonstrates the potential of multi-dielectric 3D printing for producing mmWave components, suggesting its applicability in future high-performance antenna systems.

The problem of reconstructing 3D signatures of human activities for monitoring and classification is considered in this work. A method based on data fusion from distributed MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) radar nodes is developed in order to generate 3D intensity maps and related voxel-wise velocity vectors. The proposed method was evaluated with a dataset collected using three 60 GHz radars and including 7 activities performed by 30 participants. The results show that both static postures and dynamic activities can be captured effectively: consecutive phases of activities/movements can be identified by combining spatial intensity and velocity vectors, and the participant can be localized in the area under test. Furthermore, initial promising classification results of 98.3% macro F1-score are demonstrated in a three-class problem using the proposed 3D intensity maps and velocity vectors as inputs to a Convolutional Neural Network classifier.

A novel concept to mitigate the unintended transmission and reception of signals at the third harmonic of dielectric rod antennas is proposed. To suppress the third-harmonic radiation, an additive-manufactured photonic bandgap material is used in the dielectric rod antenna. The antenna has been designed to operate at the frequency of 5 GHz and exhibit a bandgap at the third-harmonic frequency of 15 GHz. The design of the material is explained via the band diagram of the bandgap material and imperfections introduced due to the additive manufacturing (AM) process considered. Numerical simulations of dielectric rod antenna prototypes fed via a rectangular waveguide (RWG) with and without harmonic suppression are carried out to confirm the operational principle. The design proposed is verified experimentally. The manufactured antenna is characterized in terms of its input reflection coefficient and far-field radiation properties. The obtained experimental results agree well with predictions obtained through simulations and confirm the third-harmonic suppression capability of the antenna.

A data driven method is proposed to obtain free space segmentation using automotive radar point clouds. It aggregates automotive radar detection points from multiple timestamps, projects them into a Birds-Eye-View grid-based representation, and applies a semantic segmentation Neural Network (NN) to classify each grid for free space segmentation. A lidar based supervision is used to generate the ground truth for training. Moreover, debris objects are manually annotated to enable the NN model to learn to detect these uncommon objects. Experimental results on a proprietary 4D Imaging Radar dataset demonstrate that the proposed method gives improved free space segmentation as compared to other baseline methods.

An overview of polarimetric sensing and its growing application in automotive radar systems is presented. While polarimetric techniques are extensively used in fields like weather monitoring and target imaging, their integration into automotive radar presents unique challenges, particularly in calibration and measurement accuracy across wide scanning angles. This paper reviews key polarimetric principles and their use in different applications, with a focus on current automotive radar implementations, and the calibration challenges posed by off-broadside measurements. Future research directions for improving polarimetric accuracy in dynamic automotive environments are also discussed.

The throughput performance of intelligently shaped and fixed analog elevation beam patterns in millimeter-wave (mm-wave) base stations with hybrid beamforming (HBF) is assessed for the first time. Distinct spatially heterogeneous user distributions (i.e., uniform, near-site, cell-edge, and weighted uniform and near-site) and propagation environments (i.e., line-of-sight (LoS) with multipath and non-line-of-sight (NLoS) with multipath) are considered. The cosecant-squared and flat-top shaped beam patterns are compared to the benchmark pencil beam pattern with a straightforward electrical downtilt. The LoS simulation results show that in case of unknown weight of user distribution scenarios, the cosecant-squared pattern is the most robust, with a gain of up to 16% in the average system throughput and up to 34% in the 90th percentile user throughout compared to the benchmark. If the near-site case has a greater probability of occurrence than the uniform user distribution (e.g., due to daily events and festivals), the flat-top pattern becomes preferable. In the NLoS scenario, the considered HBF architectures with elevation beam pattern shaping do not bring any performance disadvantages compared to the benchmark HBF.