US 11,718,255 B2
System and method for radar-based determination of a number of passengers inside a vehicle passenger compartment
Steve Dias Da Cruz, Mertert (LU); Hans-Peter Beise, Perl (DE); and Una Karahasanovic, Trier (DE)
Assigned to IEE INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONICS & ENGINEERING S.A., Echternach (LU)
Appl. No. 16/630,778
Filed by IEE INTERNATIONAL ELECTRONICS & ENGINEERING S.A., Echternach (LU)
PCT Filed Jul. 13, 2018, PCT No. PCT/EP2018/069065
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Jan. 13, 2020,
PCT Pub. No. WO2019/012099, PCT Pub. Date Jan. 17, 2019.
Claims priority of application No. LU100338 (LU), filed on Jul. 13, 2017; and application No. LU100451 (LU), filed on Sep. 21, 2017.
Prior Publication US 2021/0146867 A1, May 20, 2021
Int. Cl. B60R 21/015 (2006.01); G01S 7/35 (2006.01); G01S 13/56 (2006.01)
CPC B60R 21/0153 (2014.10) [G01S 7/354 (2013.01); G01S 13/56 (2013.01); B60R 21/01534 (2014.10); G01S 7/356 (2021.05)] 9 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of operating a radar sensor system for determining a number of passengers in a vehicle passenger compartment, the radar sensor system including a radar transmitting unit having at least one radar transmitting antenna and being configured for transmitting radar waves towards the vehicle passenger compartment, a radar receiving unit having at least one radar receiving antenna and being configured for receiving radar waves that have been transmitted by the radar transmitter unit and have been reflected by passengers that are present in the vehicle passenger compartment, and an evaluation and control unit that is at least configured for evaluating Doppler information from the radar waves received by the radar receiving unit, the method comprising at least steps of:
operating the radar transmitting unit for transmitting radar waves towards the vehicle passenger compartment,
operating the radar receiving unit for receiving radar waves that have been transmitted by the radar transmitting unit and that have been reflected by a passenger or by passengers being present in the vehicle passenger compartment,
operating the radar receiving unit for generating received radar signals from the received radar waves,
mathematically decomposing the received radar signals into a plurality of received signal components, wherein each received signal component has a different value regarding at least one characteristic parameter,
wherein the step of decomposing the received radar signals includes performing a discrete wavelet transform, and a step of calculating the Hilbert transform for different levels of the wavelets to determine the at least one characteristic parameter that is given by an instantaneous frequency of the different levels of the wavelets,
providing values of the received signal components regarding the at least one characteristic parameter to a classifier that has been trained by supervised learning using data representing a plurality of scenarios with different numbers of passengers in the vehicle passenger compartment,
based on the provided values of the received signal components regarding the at least one characteristic parameter, identifying one of the trained scenarios, and
generating an output signal that is indicative of the identified scenario.