Landmark-Based Vehicle Self-Localization Using Automotive Polarimetric Radars

• Published in: IEEE transactions on intelligent transportation systems 2024-10, Vol.25 (10), p.14266-14283
• Main Authors: Weishaupt, Fabio, Tilly, Julius F., Appenrodt, Nils, Fischer, Pascal, Dickmann, Jurgen, Heberling, Dirk
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Automotive radar; Ground penetrating radar; localization; Location awareness; millimeter wave radar; polarimetric radar; Radar; Radar polarimetry; radar signal processing; Scattering; Sensors; Spaceborne radar
• ISSN: 1524-9050; 1558-0016
• DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2024.3397075

Automotive self-localization is an essential task for any automated driving function. This means that the vehicle has to reliably know its position and orientation with an accuracy of a few centimeters and degrees, respectively. This paper presents a radar-based approach to self-localization, which exploits fully polarimetric scattering information for robust landmark detection. The proposed method requires no input from sensors other than radar during localization for a given map. By association of landmark observations with map landmarks, the vehicle's position is inferred. Abstract point- and line-shaped landmarks allow for compact map sizes and, in combination with the factor graph formulation used, for an efficient implementation. Evaluation of extensive real-world experiments in diverse environments shows a promising overall localization performance of 0.12m RMS absolute trajectory and 0.43° RMS heading error by leveraging the polarimetric information. A comparison of the performance of different levels of polarimetric information proves the advantage in challenging scenarios.