Object position and movement estimation using radar

A system for estimating a range and a velocity of an object, the system comprising:

• a receiver configured to detect a return signal including reflections of a radar signal transmitted by a transmitter, the radar signal including a series of transmitted pulses emitted over a time frame, the return signal including a series of successive return pulses, each return pulse corresponding to a transmitted pulse and associated with a respective time interval in the time frame;
• and
• a processing device configured to perform:
• for each return pulse, applying a first Fourier transform to the return pulse to transform the return pulse into a range spectrum and calculate a range intensity value for each of a plurality of range hypotheses associated with the respective time interval;
• generating a two-dimensional matrix based on the calculated range intensity values, the matrix having a first dimension having a plurality of time elements representing each time interval, and a second dimension having a plurality of range bins, wherein a return pulse associated with a given time element includes range intensity values corresponding to multiple range bins;
• calculating a range variation for each of a plurality of hypothesized Doppler frequency values, the range variation calculated between range intensity values associated with at least two adjacent range bins;
• for each hypothesized Doppler frequency value, selecting a set of range bins, the set of range bins corresponding to at least one range bin selected from each of the time intervals based on the range variation, and applying a second Fourier transform to the range intensity values associated with each range bin of the set of range bins;
• outputting range and Doppler frequency data including a range-Doppler intensity value for each range hypothesis and hypothesized Doppler frequency;
• and
• estimating a range and a velocity of the object based on the range-Doppler intensity values, wherein estimating the range and the velocity includes selecting one or more range-Doppler intensity values associated with a reflection from the object, each of the selected one or more range-Doppler intensity values corresponding to a range of the object and a Doppler frequency value associated with a velocity of the object.