High Resolution Millimeter Wave Imaging For Self-Driving Cars

Recent years have witnessed much interest in expanding the use of networking signals beyond communication to sensing, localization, robotics, and autonomous systems. This paper explores how we can leverage recent advances in 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) technology for imaging in self-driving cars. Specifically, the use of mmWave in 5G has led to the creation of compact phased arrays with hundreds of antenna elements that can be electronically steered. Such phased arrays can expand the use of mmWave beyond vehicular communications and simple ranging sensors to a full-fledged imaging system that enables self-driving cars to see through fog, smog, snow, etc. Unfortunately, using mmWave signals for imaging in self-driving cars is challenging due to the very low resolution, the presence of fake artifacts resulting from multipath reflections and the absence of portions of the car due to specularity. This paper presents HawkEye, a system that can enable high resolution mmWave imaging in self driving cars. HawkEye addresses the above challenges by leveraging recent advances in deep learning known as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). HawkEye introduces a GAN architecture that is customized to mmWave imaging and builds a system that can significantly enhance the quality of mmWave images for self-driving cars.