EM Simulation of Automotive Radar Mounted in Vehicle Bumper

Trends in automotive safety are pushing radar systems to higher levels of accuracy and reliable target identification for blind spot detection and collision prevention assistance. Consequentially, engineers need to better understand how mounting brackets, fascia, paint color, and bumper assemblies affect the far field radiation patterns of 24 GHz and 77 GHz automotive radar systems. Long used for lower frequency (and longer wavelength) antenna-on-vehicle simulations, including vehicle-to-vehicle communication, electromagnetic (EM) simulation can now handle high fidelity analysis beyond the ideal 24 GHz and 77 GHz sensor itself, to include the antenna package and the automobile body features surrounding the device.

In this paper, a 24 GHz sensor is used to discuss differences between the simulation of a stand-alone sensor and one that is mounted in a vehicle. Efficient finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) EM analysis, combined with dramatic computation acceleration via CUDA-enabled graphics processing units (GPUs), make Remcom’s XFdtd®, a fully arbitrary 3D EM simulation software tool, an optimal choice for the simulation of an antenna-in-system design with this level of complexity.