Target Classification with a

Narrowband 24 GHz Radar System

Hermann Rohling, Frank Kruse, Florian Fölster, Malte Ahrholdt

Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg,

Department of Telecommunications,
Eißendorfer Straße 40, D-21073 Hamburg,
phone: +49 (40) 42 878 – 3028,
e-mail: { rohling | f.kruse | f.foelster | ahrholdt }@tu-harburg.de

Abstract-- Automotive radar systems offer the capability to
measure extremely accurately target range, relative
velocity, and azimuth angle for all objects inside the
observation area. It is important that the target parameters
can be measured simultaneously even in multiple target
situations, which is a technical challenge for the waveform
design. For future automotive applications like pedestrian
safety systems, collision warning, turning-off and lane-
changing assistance it will be necessary to have even more
detailed information about the target type. Therefore, a
target classification technique, which is purely based on the
range profile measured by a so-called near distance radar
sensor, is presented in this paper.
Index terms-- object recognition, classification, automotive
radar
I. INTRODUCTION
pre-crash, cut in situations etc. The detected
objects and radar targets have an individual and
different level of importance in the safety
concept. It is therefore required in several street
applications to distinguish between different
object classes and to identify the observed
targets. It would be a big step forward if the
radar sensor is able to distinguish between cars
and pedestrians. Then, a safety ring and a
safety procedure can be established to avoid
many accidents, where pedestrians are involved
in. A target classification system is described in
this paper, which has been tested successfully
in real radar environment.

Several radar sensors have been developed for

different automotive applications. The general
vision of automotive radar is shown in Figure 1
to explain the general view for future sensor
development steps. To guarantee and realise a
360-degree security area surrounding an
individual car several smart radar sensors are
needed which are implemented in the front and
rear bumper for example. Each sensor covers a
certain azimuth angular area inside a maximum
range of 60 m. Very powerful smart radar
sensors have been developed recently which
can be used for this task [1]. All present and
future driver assistant systems will be based on Figure 1: Full coverage security area surrounding
an individual car
such powerful and smart radar sensors.

This security area is needed to avoid accidents The technical task to distinguish between
and to increase traffic safety. Some important different radar targets based on a classification
safety applications are currently under system is a real challenge. There are many
investigation like stop and go, stop and roll, publications about radar target classification
topics for several applications but the related
performance figures in most of these
applications are not convincing.
It is therefore a real surprise that radar target
classification procedures have been developed
and tested successfully based on a 24 GHz
radar network or even on a single radar sensor
[2] applied to automotive applications.
II. NARROWBAND 24 GHZ RADAR SENSOR
overlapping area of both antennas but it is not
mandatory because each sensor measures
already range, Doppler frequency and azimuth
angle independently.
Only a single smart radar sensor is used for
target classification in this paper. In this case,
all information from the received echo signal is
analyzed in detail to distinguish between
different radar objects or target types. The
general objective is to distinguish between
pedestrians and cars.

Research in radar target classification is based

in this paper on a single 24 GHz monopulse
radar sensor, which is described in detail in [1]
and which has been integrated into the
Technical University Hamburg-Harburg test
car, see Figure 2. It is a licensed automotive
radar in the 24 GHz band with a system
bandwidth of 200 MHz only, which corre-
sponds to a range resolution of 0.8 m.
Therefore, this radar sensor is called Universal
Medium Range Resolution (UMRR) system.
The minimum range is 0.75 m and the
maximum range is 60 m. Range and Doppler Figure 2: Multi Mode Monopuls Radar
frequency are measured simultaneously by
applying an FMCW waveform. The azimuth
angle is measured with high accuracy by
monopulse technique.

Technical Data (narrowband mode)

Bandwidth < 200 MHz
Minimum Range 0.75 m
Maximum Range 60 m +
Cycle Time 25 ms
Velocity Interval -25…+50 m/s
Carrier Frequency 24.125 GHz
Table 1: UMRR Technical Data [1]
Figure 3: Radar Network

To establish a large safety area in front of a car

two different radar sensors have been
integrated behind the front bumper with only
slightly overlapping antenna beams, see Figure
3. Each sensor measures the received signal
independently, detects the targets and
calculates the target parameter respectively. A
sensor fusion technique can be applied in the
III. RADAR SENSOR BASED CLASSIFICATION
The real challenging task for radar target
classification is to classify the echo signals
from pedestrians, cars and cyclists, which is
shown in Figure 4. The radar sensor
functionality is completely unchanged but
extended by the target classification procedure.
Therefore, after target detection all echo signals
are analyzed in detail to estimate and measure
additional radar echo signal and target features,
which can be used in the classification
procedure. If the echo signal contains sufficient
information, to distinguish between pedestrians
and cars is still an open issue but has been
validated for some radar sensors so far. Figure
4 shows briefly the general task of a radar
target classification system to classify the echo
signals coming from pedestrians, cars or
cyclist.
a few features. This fluctuation consideration is
determined by ten consecutive measurements
of RCS values over time. The second feature
group describes the Doppler frequency
measurement over time. Again some fluctua-
tions are analyzed on a statistical basis and
described quantitatively by some features. An
instance for a Doppler-related feature is the
velocity dynamic over time. The third group
considers signal features which describe the
geometrical properties of any radar echo signal,
like target extend etc. Geometric features
depend in general on the expansion of the
observed target.

100

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Amplitude [dB]
60

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0
200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Distance [cm]
Figure 4: General task for a radar target
classification procedure
Figure 5: Samples of received echo signals of a car

The main question of a target classification

procedure is to generate features from the echo 100

signal, which have sufficient information to 90

80
characterize the different targets. The detailed
70
range profile of a car and pedestrian is shown
Amplitude [dB]

60
in Figure 5 and Figure 6 respectively. Theses 50
single shot measurements can be the basis for 40

some single shot echo signal features. It can be 30

clearly seen that the range profile contains 20

sufficient information to characterize the 10

individual target type. 0

200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Distance [cm]

The different features within a radar based Figure 6: Samples of received echo signals of a
classification system depend on the physical pedestrian
properties of each individual target class. For
the considered single monopulse radar system
Starting with a single target feature, which has
the target features can be grouped into three
been calculated from the echo signal a
characteristic groups. One group describes the
histogram of this radar target specific feature
radar cross section (RCS) aspect. The
distribution can be calculated. This result is
fluctuation of the received RCS values is
shown as an example in Figure 7. The red
measured on a statistical basis and described by
curve shows the feature distribution for the car,
d = AΤ ⋅ x . (1)
the green curve for the cyclist and the blue for
the pedestrian respectively. It can be observed The final decision about the target type ω̂ is
in this first example that a single feature is not made by evaluating the maximum of the
sufficient in general for automotive target discriminator vector.
classification because the target specific feature
ωˆ = i | d i = max (d) (2)
value distribution overlaps too much and the
classification rate will be too low in this case.

Therefore, a multiple feature analysis has been IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

established. Figure 7 again shows the situation
for a two-feature situation case. The target
specific feature value distribution is shown for
the two considered features on the left. Both
histograms show a strong overlapping
situation. But already in a two-dimensional
space it can be observed that it becomes much
easier to find certain thresholds, which
distinguish between the three radar target
classes, see the scatter plot in Figure 7.
The target classification procedure has been
implemented into a single UMRR radar sensor
for tests in real target environments. A target
classification technique has been developed,
which considers three target types, cars,
cyclists and pedestrians. One of the test
scenarios is shown in Figure 8. Three different
objects are inside the observation area of the
UMRR sensor, a single car, a cyclist and a
pedestrian respectively. The radar sensor has
detected all three objects and calculated the
target range, azimuth angle and radial velocity
(Doppler frequency).

After target detection, the radar target

classification procedure has been applied to the
feature vector described in this paper. A single
result (snap shot) is shown in Figure 8. The car,
the cyclist and the pedestrian echo signals have
been classified correctly.

Figure 7: Feature distribution and two dimensional

scatter plot

Finally, a set of 12 different features has been

established. A classification system [3] has
been applied, which uses these features in a
two-step procedure. In a first step all feature
vectors are labeled by the radar target type.
This information is used in the learning period
to calculate a coefficient matrix A for the
mapping procedure between feature vector x
and radar target type.
Figure 8: Target classification result
During the classification phase, this coefficient
The overall performance of this target
matrix A is applied to all generated feature
classification system is shown in Figure 9. In a
vectors x to determine a discriminator vector
90 s time frame the car and the cyclist were on
a fixed position (stationary targets). Only the
pedestrian was walking from the radar sensor
position up to a distance of 35 m including a
few short stops. The pedestrian run back later
to the radar sensor position quickly.
The range measurement accuracy and target
classification performance is shown in Figure
9. Range accuracy calculated by the UMRR is
quite large for all considered targets. The car
(red dots) is classified correctly in almost all
signal echo cases. The vulnerable road users
pedestrian person (blue dots) and cyclist (green
dots) belong to the same layer of safety
importance. Therefore each classification error
between these two classes can be neglected
from a system point of view.
There are only a very few radar echo signal
situations where the pedestrian and the cyclist
are observed on the same range. In these cases
the target classification system made some
errors and decided in such radar echo signals
for a car. This is indicated in Figure 9 by the
red colored dots.
In a realistic test environment it was shown and
demonstrated experimentally that the
developed target classification system is able to
distinguish successfully between the radar echo
signals coming from pedestrian and cars. All
these measurements were based on a single
UMRR monopulse radar.
VI. REFERENCES
[1] Mende, Ralph; Marc, Behrens; Meinecke, Marc-Michael;
Bartels, Arne; To, Thanh-Binh: “The UMRR-S: A High-
Performance 24 GHz Multi Mode Automotive Radar Sensor for
Comfort and Safety Applications”, International Radar Symposium
IRS 2003, Dresden, Germany, 2003
[2] Kruse, Frank; Fölster, Florian; Ahrholdt, Malte; Meinecke,
Marc-Michael; Rohling, Hermann: “Object Classification with
Automotive Radar”, International Radar Symposium IRS 2003,
Dresden, Germany, 2003
[3] Ahrholdt, Malte; Rohling, Hermann: “Characterization of
Aerospace CFRP Structures by an Automatic Classification
System”, 8th European Conference on Non-Destructive Testing,
Barcelona, 2002
[4] Klotz, Michael; Rohling, Hermann: “A 24GHz Short Range
Radar Network for Automotive Applications”, CIE International
Conference on Radar, Beijing, 2001
[5] Oprişan, Dan; Rohling, Hermann: “Tracking Systems for
Automotive Radar Networks”, IEE Radar 2002, Edinburgh, 2002

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Distance [m]

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Time [s]

Figure 9: Classification result. Decision for a car is

indicated by a red dot and for a person by a blue dot

V. CONCLUSION

It has been shown in this paper that the radar

target classification procedure has an extremely
high performance for automotive applications.