Employing beam-forming for estimating the direction of arrival in a multi-path propagation environment

Abstract. Due to recent researches on traffic accidents with vulnerable road users (VRUs), several measures revealed a great opportunity of reduction. However, all measures applied so far failed to reduce the number of traffic accidents if there is no line-of-sight. Therefore, a transponder signal is utilized to make the VRU visible. The motor vehicle carries a mobile receiver for VRU detection and location. The receiver employs digital beam-forming for estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) with an antenna array for RF ISM band. A sequence of DOA estimations is used for location and motion estimation purposes.