Decentralised radar system

A method for a radar sensor having a plurality of transmit antennas and a plurality of receive antennas, the method comprising:

• digitizing by a transceiver, received radar signals to provide a plurality of digital samples;
• forming by a digital processor, a measurement matrix by transforming the plurality of digital samples into two dimensional distance/relative velocity matrices and then concatenating the two dimensional distance/relative velocity matrices for each combination of the plurality of transmit antennas and the plurality of receive antennas, wherein the measurement matrix is a three dimensional matrix, each dimension of the three dimensional matrix respectively corresponding to a distance, a relative velocity, and a transmit/receive antenna combination;
• identifying by a filter, samples of the plurality of digital samples having a signal to noise ratio higher than a threshold value by filtering the distance/relative velocity matrices;
• and
• transmitting by an interface, the identified samples and their location in the measurement matrix to a remote host processor configured to further carry out direction of arrival processing on the identified samples.

A system comprising:

• a radar sensor comprising:
• a plurality of transmit antennas;
• a plurality of receive antennas;
• a transceiver configured to digitize received radar signals to provide a plurality of digital samples;
• a digital signal processor configured to form a measurement matrix by transforming the plurality of digital samples into two dimensional distance/relative velocity matrices and then concatenating the two dimensional distance/relative velocity matrices for each combination of the plurality of transmit antennas and the plurality of receive antennas, wherein the measurement matrix is a three dimensional matrix, each dimension of the three dimensional matrix respectively corresponding to a distance, a relative velocity, and a transmit/receive antenna combination;
• a filter configured to identify samples of the plurality of digital samples having a signal to noise ratio higher than a threshold value by filtering the two dimensional distance/relative velocity matrices;
• and
• an interface configured to transmit the identified samples and their location in the measurement matrix to a remote host processor configured to further carry out direction of arrival processing on the identified samples;
• the system further comprising:
• a host processor configured to receive the identified samples and their location in the measurement matrix.