Vehicle tracking using a microwave radar for situation awareness

In this paper, a probabilistic target vehicle tracking method is proposed for situation awareness of intelligent cruise control (ICC) vehicle. The ICC vehicle considered herein is equipped with a 24 GHz microwave radar for tracking the preceding vehicle. To overcome the severe dispersion and noise of the microwave radar, a statistical model for the radar is built and it is applied to the hybrid particle filter. The hybrid particle filter is combined with the interacting multiple models (IMM) to track the preceding vehicle and predict the driver's intention. Furthermore, the modified hybrid particle filter is proposed to cope with the missing or multiple measurements of the microwave radar. Finally, a computer simulation is conducted and the validity of the proposed method is demonstrated.