Antenna Setup for Future Joint Radar-Communications -- Characteristics
and Mounting Positions
Abstract
The development of millimeter wave systems is driven by the strong trend
toward new communications generations and especially by the emerging
joint radar and communications design approach. Safety-critical
applications like platooning or intersection assistance will
significantly benefit from the combination of sensing and
communications. While radar performs a channel measurement and thus,
needs a wide field of view (especially in city/intersection scenarios),
communications aims to minimize the interference for other not addressed
receivers (e. g. in a platoon) by a focused antenna design. The proposed
work extends the analysis of the influence of various antenna
positioning for a typical automotive scene by taking also different
characteristics (antenna gain, half power beamwidth, and sidelobe level)
into account. Hereby, it is mandatory to investigate the communications
and sensing performance simultaneously. The positions at the front
bumper – typical for radar sensors – and especially at the left mirror
convinced regarding the vehicular communications as well as the sensing
behaviour. Applying focused antennas is promising, however, has also
limits if the signals are not received out of the main beam but out of
the sidelobes, resulting in a critical communications performance. Thus,
beam steering is recommended to be applied in the future.