Speed Measurement of Vehicles by Radio Waves

This paper describes a new method of measuring the absolute speed of moving objects such as people who are walking or running, running animals, vehicles, sailing boats and the like.

The method estimates speed using the time delay between spatial values (patterns) detected by the front and rear sensors which are separately disposed on an object and aligned in the direction of movement.

It is known that the electric field intensity of radio waves in the VHF/UHF range exhibit a spatial periodic pattern due to the multi-pass fading phenomenon. It is also known that this phenomenon is a source of noise in automotive telecommunications. In experiments we make use this pattern for speed measurement and investigate if the pattern can be used to provide a spatial value which permits the estimation of the speed of the above mentioned types of objects. From various viewpoints and we show that it can be used to provide accurate measurements and further provide a guide line of how to design a measuring system which operates on this concept.