A Method for Radar-Based Target Tracking in Non-Uniform Road Condition

In the Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system, the conventional target tracking method depends on the yaw rate/steering angle information and is effective for the uniform road condition, where the host and target vehicles are on the roads with the same curvature. But it cannot work on non-uniform road conditions where the target vehicle and host vehicle are on the road with different curvature like curve-entry and lane change. Therefore a new method to track a target vehicle in non-uniform conditions has been developed. It is based on the locus on the phase chart between the azimuth angle and relative velocity, which are obtained from the radar and host vehicle information. It can express the path of the target vehicle in non-uniform conditions exactly since the locus can be expressed theoretically. The theory of the method and the simulation results are shown here. The performance for the curve-entry, curve-exit and lane-change is satisfactory.