Abstract: An apparatus and method for detecting radar system blockage includes a radar system (10) having an antenna unit (14) configured to transmit radar signals and receive reflected radar signals. In one embodiment, fixed frequency continuous wave radar signals are transmitted, and corresponding reflected signals are sampled and processed to determine a mainbeam clutter signal peak in frequency bins near those corresponding to vehicle speed. If this peak is less than a power threshold, the antenna unit (14) is at least partially blocked. In another embodiment, a number of most recent reflected tracking signal amplitudes are sampled, normalized to a predefined range value and filtered to produce a smoothed tracking amplitude. If the smoothed tracking amplitude drops below an amplitude threshold, the antenna unit (14) is at least partially blocked. The two embodiments may be combined to determine a radar antenna blockage status as a function of both techniques.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for detecting radar system blockage includes a radar system having an antenna unit configured to transmit radar signals and receive reflected radar signals. In one embodiment, fixed frequency continuous wave radar signals are transmitted, and corresponding reflected signals are sampled and processed to determine a mainbeam clutter signal peak in frequency bins near those corresponding to vehicle speed. If this peak is less than a power threshold, the antenna unit is at least partially blocked. In another embodiment, a number of most recent reflected tracking signal amplitudes are sampled, normalized to a predefined range value and filtered to produce a smoothed tracking amplitude. If the smoothed tracking amplitude drops below an amplitude threshold, the antenna unit is at least partially blocked. The two embodiments may be combined to determine a radar antenna blockage status as a function of both techniques.

Abstract: A method for rejecting system-to-system interference in a FLR system in which sampled data obtained from each channel of the FLR receiver is analyzed to recognize transient data due to interference with another FLR system and bounded in the time domain. The bounded data set is deleted and replaced with a new data set determined by interpolation. The transient data is recognized when the variance of a sliding window of samples exceeds a variance threshold. The method removes transient pulses with minimal distortion of the raw data, and the impact on system complexity and cost is minimal when the system already includes digital signal processing capability for other purposes.