Doppler Radar Speed Measurement Based On A 24 GHz Radar Sensor

Abstract

This thesis will present the implementation of an on-board speed measurement system using a single 24.1 GHz Doppler radar sensor and specialized algorithms to measure the true speed of a vehicle. Two different algorithms are implemented, the first based on estimating the Doppler power density spectrum and extracting the strongest frequency component, and the second based on correlation between the Doppler spectrum and pre-estimated theoretical spectra. The output can be displayed to the user in real-time as well as stored for future reference.An ARM Cortex M4 microcontroller with digital signal processing capabilities is used as the hardware platform, with an audio CODEC chip used as the analog to digital converter. The software is implemented using the C programming language. The system is tested and the measurements are compared to a GPS reference system, with results showing statistical mean errors down to as little as 0.03 km/h and -0.18 %, and a standard deviation of 0.87 km/h during the final test runs.