Improving passenger safety in cars using novel radar signal processing

Abstract

AbstractAccording to the group Kids and Cars, since 1990, nearly 1000 kids lost their lives because they were deliberately or unintentionally left in parked vehicles to potentially overheat or freeze. The development of technology able to prevent and address this serious, worldwide problem is crucial. In this paper, we deploy a radar‐based sensor for in‐vehicle presence‐absence detection of a living body. We present a novel radar signal processing technique to identify the presence or absence of a living body in a vehicle using a mm‐wave frequency‐modulated continuous‐wave (FMCW) radar. Our proposed method is based on reflections from breathing cycles creating correlated and consistent micro‐Doppler effects over time. The performance of the system is evaluated with adults and two phantoms mimicking the breathing of children in various scenarios. The results show that we can clearly detect any tiny living body in vehicles with 100% accuracy without a need for any compute‐intensive complex signal processing, making the system of extreme low‐cost. The results demonstrate the high sensitivity and robustness of the mm‐wave system in extensive studies over the course of multiple months.