Denso Corporation

Yuu Watanabe

Kazuma Natsume

Chiharu Yamano

Mai Sakamoto

Koichiro Suzuki

Hideki Shirai

Takashi Watanabe

Eiichi Okuno

Takuya Fuse

Kento Nakabayashi

Yasushi Kouno

Takuya Kouya

Koutarou Mizunuma

Hirokazu Ohyabu

In a vehicle control apparatus, a rear side detecting unit, mounted to an own vehicle, detects another vehicle that is present in a first area behind and to a side of the own vehicle. A time acquiring unit, mounted to the own vehicle, acquires a first time that is an estimated time at which a front approaching vehicle will arrive at the first area. The front approaching vehicle is another vehicle that is relatively nearing the own vehicle from ahead of the own vehicle. A sensitivity setting unit, mounted to the own vehicle, sets a detection sensitivity of the rear side detecting unit to the other vehicle in at least a part of the first area in such a manner that the detection sensitivity during a predetermined period set based on the first time is higher than the detection sensitivity during a remaining period other than the predetermined period.

Vehicle control apparatus and vehicle

An antenna device includes: antennas; magnetic oscillation element units converting electrical energy to high-frequency power; and a modulator outputting electrical energy input from outside to at least two magnetic oscillation element units, with a time difference to differentiate phases of high-frequency power converted from electrical energy by at least two magnetic oscillation element units. The magnetic oscillation element units respectively include a pair of electrodes, and further include, between the pair of electrodes, a PIN layer, a free layer, and an intermediate layer. A resistance value of an element configured by the PIN, free and intermediate layers changes according to the angle between the magnetization direction of the PIN layer and the magnetization direction of the free layer. The antennas transmit electromagnetic waves to open space outside the magnetic oscillation element units with the supply of high-frequency power.

Antenna device and high-frequency transmitter

In a dual-frequency CW radar apparatus, first/second beat signals that include reflection components of radar waves conforming to transmission signals of first/second frequencies are generated for each antenna element and the generated signals are Fourier transformed. A power spectrum average of the beat signals is used as a basis for the detection of a peak frequency fcorresponding to the frequency of the reflection components. A second eigenvalue &#x3bb;of a correlation matrix: Ry=(&#xbd;)&#xb7;[y,y][y,y]is calculated, the matrix being based on first received vector y/second received vector yhaving elements that are Fourier transformed values of the peak frequency f. Based on the magnitude of the eigenvalue &#x3bb;, whether or not the reflection components corresponding to the peak frequency fare synthetic components of the reflected waves from a plurality of targets is decided.

Radar apparatus

A signal processing unit in a radar device calculates a change amount Y (=log(P)&#x2212;log(Pb)) between a power P of a current arrival echo and a power of a previous arrival echo arrived before an observation period T. A memory unit in the radar device stores, every type of objects, a probability distribution of the change amount Y calculated from the arrival echo from the object. On the basis of the calculated change amount Y and the probability distribution, the signal processing unit determines a probability Pr to obtain the change amount Y every type of object, and determines that the object having the maximum probability Pr is the object which transmits the current arrival echo.

Radar device

The array antenna includes a feed line, and a plurality of radiating element sections arranged at a predetermined arranging interval in a first direction, each of the radiating element sections including at least one radiating element fed a traveling wave through the feed line. The inter-element line length as a length of the feed line between each succeeding two of the radiating element sections is longer than the arranging interval in the first direction.

Array antenna and radar apparatus

A sampled beat signal RD is split into a plurality of short-time data SD in the time direction, for each of antenna elements. Interference component frequency of an interference wave is detected from a frequency spectrum of the short-time data SD. A digital beam forming process is performed for the interference component frequency of the interference wave to extract a peak of the electrical power of an azimuth direction and estimate an absolute value of an incoming direction of interference components. Based on the absolute value of the incoming direction of the estimated interference components, a filter for suppressing the interference components is operated to suppress the interference components.

Electronically scanned radar system

A FMCW-type radar device generates snapshot data from a beat signal that represents a received condition of the radar device every modulation period. Auto-correlation matrices generated by the snapshot data every modulation period are averaged every set of plural periods. The radar device calculates the target azimuth of a target object such as a preceding vehicle based on the averaged auto-correlation matrix based on MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classification) method. This averaging is performed by weighting average based on an amount of mixed noise (or an interference amount) contained in the snapshot data in each modulation period. A weighting coefficient to be applied to the auto-correlation matrix in each modulation period is set to a value corresponding to the amount of mixed noise, namely, the interference amount of this modulation period. The weighting coefficient becomes large when the interference amount is small, and on the other hand, becomes small when it is large.

In a FM-CW or CW radar apparatus, when interference components are contained in channel signals obtained as beat signals from array antenna elements of respective channels, and the interference components result from directly receiving transmitted CW radar waves from an external source, phase shifting is applied to each of the channel signals to shift respective phases of the interference components of the respective channels to a condition corresponding to reception of interference waves from a predetermined direction. The interference components are then eliminated, and reverse phase shifting is applied to restore remaining components of the channel signals to their original phase condition.

Radar apparatus enabling simplified suppression of interference signal components which result from reception of directly transmitted radar waves from another radar apparatus

A sampled beat signal is cut out into two or more short time data in a time direction concerning each antenna component. From a frequency spectrum of the short time data, an interference element frequency of an interference wave is detected. From the interference element frequency of the interference wave, two or more candidates of the frequency before aliasing of the interference wave are produced, and phase correction is executed on each candidate. Digital Beamforming is executed on the corrected frequency so as to extract maximum peaks of the power of an azimuth direction, and the frequency candidate showing the maximum peak power is selected and the arrival azimuth of the interference element is estimated. A filter for suppressing the interference element is applied on the short time data from the estimated arrival azimuth of the interference element so as to suppress the interference element.

Electronic scanning radar apparatus

A radar system mounted on a vehicle includes a first radar and a second radar, each having a transmitter-receiver and a signal processor. The transmitter-receiver transmits radar waves to detect objects such as another vehicle or other obstacles. An operating cycle period T, Tand a transmission time X, Xduring which the radar waves are transmitted are set in both radars to satisfy the formula: K&#xb7;TXXT&#x2266;(K+)&#xb7;TXXunder a condition that TT, where K is a positive integer. By setting both radars in this manner, interference between two radars is avoided without using additional devices in the radar system, and a high detection accuracy is realized.

Method of preventing interference between radars and radar system having interference preventing function

An FMCW radar device executes a frequency analysis for a beat signal in a frequency increase interval and a frequency decrease interval, to obtain frequency components in a predetermined high frequency range exceeding a frequency range corresponding to a target detection frequency range within which a target object for detection should be detected. Then the FMCW radar device calculates a value related to a sum of intensities of frequency components within the high frequency range respectively for each of the frequency increase interval and the frequency decrease interval. In the case that one of the calculated integrals is larger than a threshold, the FMCW radar device determines that the FMCW radar device is interfered with by a nearby radar device.

FMCW radar device and method for detecting interference

Occurrence of interference is detected using sampled amplitude data obtained by oversampling a beat signal. It is detected by comparing the absolute value (|VD|) of variation in the sampled data with a threshold value (TH). When interference occurs, a wideband signal is superposed on the beat signal, and this disturbs the signal waveform of the beat signal to drastically varies its amplitude. Therefore, occurrence of interference can be detected without fail regardless of the scheme on which a radar as the source of an interference wave is based and even when the amplitude of the interference wave is low. In addition, when low-frequency noise is superposed on the beat signal, erroneous detection of occurrence of interference can be prevented.

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Toyota, Japan

Yuu Watanabe