Weighted SPICE Algorithms for Range-Doppler Imaging Using One-Bit Automotive Radar

TL;DR

This paper develops and extends hyperparameter-free sparse estimation algorithms, including 1bSPICE, 1bLIKES, and 1bIAA, for accurate range-Doppler imaging in one-bit automotive radar systems, significantly reducing hardware costs.

Contribution

It introduces the 1bSLIM algorithm and extends existing algorithms to one-bit data, enabling efficient and accurate range-Doppler imaging with one-bit radar sampling.

Findings

Algorithms achieve high accuracy in simulated data.

Experimental results confirm effectiveness in real radar systems.

FFT-based implementations improve computational efficiency.

Abstract

We consider the problem of range-Doppler imaging using one-bit automotive LFMCW1 or PMCW radar that utilizes one-bit ADC sampling with time-varying thresholds at the receiver. The one-bit sampling technique can significantly reduce the cost as well as the power consumption of automotive radar systems. We formulate the one-bit LFMCW/PMCW radar rangeDoppler imaging problem as one-bit sparse parameter estimation. The recently proposed hyperparameter-free (and hence user friendly) weighted SPICE algorithms, including SPICE, LIKES, SLIM and IAA, achieve excellent parameter estimation performance for data sampled with high precision. However, these algorithms cannot be used directly for one-bit data. In this paper we first present a regularized minimization algorithm, referred to as 1bSLIM, for accurate range-Doppler imaging using onebit radar systems. Then, we describe how to extend the SPICE, LIKES and IAA algorithms to the one-bit data case, and refer to these extensions as 1bSPICE, 1bLIKES and 1bIAA. These onebit hyperparameter-free algorithms are unified within the one-bit weighted SPICE framework. Moreover, efficient implementations of the aforementioned algorithms are investigated that rely heavily on the use of FFTs. Finally, both simulated and experimental examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms for range-Doppler imaging using one-bit automotive radar systems.