Developing Calibration Tools for Microscopic Traffic Simulation Final Report Part 1: Overview Methods and Guidelines on Project Scoping and Data Collection

The purpose of MOU-233 is to evaluate and test a low cost, short range radar sensor developed by Amerigon corporation through a subcontract with the University of Southern California. The radar is designed to be used as a ranging sensor for automatic vehicle following applications. It is intended to be mounted in the front of the vehicle and provide measurements of the distance between the front of the vehicle and the rear of any vehicle or object ahead within a maximum distance of 17 feet. The output of the radar as supplied by Amerigon, is a 32-bit binary code, using one bit to represent each one of the range gates. In each sample, a bit value of '1' represents a range gate that detected a target and a value of '0' represents a range gate that has not detected a target. An algorithm has been developed to convert the binary code into distance measurements and to filter out undesirable effects such as noise, loss of target and other disturbances. Two prototype radar units have been delivered to PATH by Amerigon and we used them on the PATH vehicles for testing and evaluation. In this report we present the results of the testing and the evaluation of the Amerigon radar.