A Two-Chip-Cascaded 4D Millimeter-Wave Imaging Radar Aiming for Automotive SLAM

Since the concept of simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) was proposed and investigated in 1980s, it has been attracting continuous attentions not only from classic robotics regime but also from extended virtual reality (VR)/amplified reality (AR), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and autonomous driving applications, respectively. This paper focuses on a SLAM oriented solution merely using millimeter-wave 4D imaging radar for autonomous parking function. The two-chip cascaded 4D radar offers totally 6 transmitting and 8 receiving physic channels in RF front-end. By applying sparse antenna array and multi-input multi-output (MIMO) technique, 48 virtual channels can be emulated, which achieve angle separation each of 1.5 degrees on azimuth and 3 degrees on elevation plane. With maximum detection range of 306 m, the implemented 4D radar can demonstrate reasonable imaging effect aiming for SLAM application by generating 10240 points/s in various on-vehicle low-speed outdoor test scenarios.