Recent Patents in Signal Processing (November 2013) - Radar Signal Processing

For our November 2013 issue, we return to the topic of radar signal processing. We had last covered recent patents in the area of radar signal processing in November 2011. Below, we consider several recent inventions in applications that involve processing of radar, lidar and millimeter wave signals. Different from our previous coverage of radar-related inventions which dealt primarily with airborne or satellite platforms, this selection is biased more toward civilian (e.g. automotive) applications.

Number:  8,564,473
Title:  Method for constructing focused radar images
Inventors: L. Bosser, J. Broussolle and J. Lafaix
Issued: October 22, 2013
Assignee:  Thales (Neuilly sur Seine, France)

Number:  8,527,151
Title:  Side impact safety system with blind-spot detection radar data fusion
Inventors: J. Le, M. Rao, T. Clark and M. Niesluchowski
Issued: September 3, 2013
Assignee:  Ford Global Technologies, LLC (Dearborn, MI)

Number:  8,441,393
Title:  Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radio as radar
Inventors: P. Strauch, S. Nag and F. Mohamadi
Issued: May 14, 2013
Assignee:  Tialinx, Inc. (Newport Beach, CA)

Number:  8,427,361
Title:  Radar apparatus for use in vehicle
Inventors: K. Sato
Issued: April 23, 2013
Assignee:  Denso Corporation (Kariya, JP)

Number:  8,344,942
Title:  System and method for resolving ambiguity in radar, lidar, and acoustic systems
Inventors: M. Jin, C. - Y. Chang
Issued: January 1, 2013
Assignee: Raytheon Company (Waltham, MA)

Number:  8,537,338
Title:  Street curb and median detection using LIDAR data
Inventors: S. Medasani, Y. Owechko and T. Korah
Issued: September 17, 2013
Assignee:  HRL Laboratories, LLC (Malibu, CA)

Number:  8,224,097
Title:  Building segmentation for densely built urban regions using aerial LIDAR data
Inventors: B. Matei, S. Samarasekara, J. Kim, C. Karney, H. Sawhney and R. Kumar
Issued: July 17, 2012
Assignee:  SRI International (Menlo Park, CA)

Number:  8,471,760
Title:  Automotive radar with radio-frequency interference avoidance
Inventors: W. Szajnowski
Issued: June 25, 2013
Assignee:  Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Tokyo, Japan)

Number:  8,299,957
Title:  Method for detecting a vehicle type, a vehicle speed and width of a detecting area by a vehicle radar sensor
Inventors: M. -T. Tseng
Issued: October 30, 2012
Assignee:  Chien Cheng Technology Co., Ltd. (Hsin-Chu, Taiwan)

If you have an interesting patent to share when we next feature patents related to radar signal processing, or if you are especially interested in a signal processing research field that you would want to be highlighted in this section, please send email to Shantanu Rane (rane AT merl DOT com).