New features in Remcom’s WaveFarer® radar simulation software provide a more realistic representation of the conditions vehicles encounter in the real world, revealing backscatter from road surfaces and vehicle interiors, which improve the realism of simulations. The automotive radar version of WaveFarer supports testing for sensor placement, signal processing and target identification, so auto makers and their suppliers can virtually test and refine sensors early in the design process.

Considering surface variations caused by common road phenomena, like gravel or crumbling pavement, enables WaveFarer to more accurately model the environment. Diffuse scattering adds scattered paths from the rough surface of the road, another car, guard rail posts and other physical features in the environment. WaveFarer’s new diffuse scattering model increases fidelity by simulating how the paths interact with these rough surfaces, revealing their impact on power, phase and the polarization of propagating waves. Effects such as complex impulse response, delay spread and increased cross-polarization of the received signals can be visualized and incorporated into the results.

The WaveFarer update adds the ability to calculate the transmission through materials, including windows, walls and composites. The simulator analyzes scattering effects naturally occurring while a car is in motion, such as waves passing through the windshield and interacting with the vehicle’s interior or through a bumper and reflecting off the metal chassis.

Several new tools, including scripts for setting up simulations with chirp waveforms and post-processing utilities for predicting Doppler velocity and generating range-Doppler plots, will increase the accuracy of target detection.

Remcom Inc.
State College, Pa.
www.remcom.com