Method of adaptively adjusting the target detection sensitivity of a motor vehicle radar

摘要

The factory-calibrated target discrimination threshold of a radar-based motor vehicle back-up aid is adaptively lowered under specified vehicle operating conditions to provide enhanced target detection sensitivity without causing false target detection. The threshold is initialized to the calibrated value on transition to the reverse range (66), and is thereafter subject to adaptive adjustment (86, 96) so long as a target is not detected (76) and a high-clutter condition is not in effect (68). The adaptive adjustment is carried out by low-pass filtering (30) the resultant data of the radar sensor (18), starting with a factory-calibrated noise baseline, to determine the current noise level, and then calculating the threshold from the noise level. The adaptive adjustment is suspended for an interval after target detection (78, 82), and the threshold is increased (72) when a high clutter condition is detected based on rate of change in vehicle speed (68).