Radar Classification of Vehicles Using a Ground-Reflection Model

Classification of road users is important for traffic monitoring. The usability of a height estimate based on the two-ray ground-reflection model as a feature for the classification of vehicles is analyzed in this paper. The four-ray ground-reflection model for fast chirp ramp sequence waveforms of FMCW radars is derived and simplified to the well-known two-ray ground-reflection model. A spectrum from which the height of a target can be derived is obtained using the Lomb-Scargle periodogram. Measurements with two vehicle classes illustrate the approach and show that the model could be used as a feature to distinguish vehicles based on their height.