US 12,442,895 B2
Determining reliability of a direction of arrival (DOA) of a signal received by a radar system from a source and apparatus for determining reliability
Marco Jan Gerrit Bekooij, Empel (NL)
Assigned to NXP B.V., Eindhoven (NL)
Filed by NXP B.V., Eindhoven (NL)
Filed on Sep. 30, 2021, as Appl. No. 17/449,533.
Prior Publication US 2023/0101091 A1, Mar. 30, 2023
Int. Cl. G01S 7/41 (2006.01); G01S 7/292 (2006.01); G01S 13/02 (2006.01); G01S 13/36 (2006.01)
CPC G01S 7/417 (2013.01) [G01S 7/2927 (2013.01); G01S 7/411 (2013.01); G01S 7/414 (2013.01); G01S 13/36 (2013.01); G01S 2013/0245 (2013.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method performed by a radar system, the method comprising:
receiving a snapshot comprising a plurality of signals, each of the plurality of signals reflected from a respective source and received by an antenna array;
determining, by a first DoA estimator and based on the received snapshot, a plurality of DoAs, the plurality of DoAs comprising a respective DoA for each of the plurality of signals;
measuring a reliability of the plurality of DoAs from the first DoA estimator, the reliability being a difference between the received snapshot and a snapshot estimate, the snapshot estimate being an estimate of signal amplitudes of the received snapshot and determined based on the plurality of DoAs;
in response to the reliability of the plurality of the DoAs exceeding a threshold, outputting at least one of the plurality of the DoAs determined by the first DoA estimator; and
in response to the reliability of the plurality of the DoAs not exceeding the threshold, determining by a second DoA estimator based on the received snapshot, a second plurality of DoAs comprising a respective DoA of each of the plurality of signals and outputting at least one of the second plurality of DoAs determined by the second DoA estimator,
wherein the first DoA estimator is a deep neural network (DNN) to estimate the plurality of DoAs from the received snapshot and the second DoA estimator estimates the second plurality of DoAs from the received snapshot based on a deterministic maximum likelihood (DML) estimation and not based on the plurality of DoAs from the first DoA estimator, the DML estimation being performed after the DNN estimation when the reliability of the plurality of the DoAs determined by the DNN estimation does not exceed the threshold.