Instantaneous Velocity Estimation of Multiple Targets using Coordinated OFDM RADAR Nodes

Joint communication and sensing receives a lot of attention in the research community. Sensing the environment with communication networks can save a lot of resources. The sensing capability of OFDM radar has been investigated by many research groups and shows great potential. Although tracking the trajectory of the target is important, the instantaneous velocity of the target can be beneficial for many applications. If the instantaneous velocity of the target is known, the direction of movement can be more accurately predicted to avoid potential hazards. Therefore, in this paper, multiple OFDM radar nodes are used to jointly estimate the instantaneous velocity of multiple targets. A Gaussian mixed probability hypothesis density filter is employed to estimate the number and state of targets from observations with many false estimates. Subsequently, the instantaneous velocity estimation algorithm based on the least squares method efficiently estimates multiple targets’ instantaneous velocity vectors with an error rate as low as about 11.48 %. There are many potential applications, such as robotic arms in factories or self-driving cars.