Author(s)

Yu Quan ¹, Lv Jingjing ¹, Guo Huihui ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Electrical and Control Engineering, North China University of Technology, Beijing, China

Corresponding Author

Lv Jingjing

ABSTRACT

In response to the critical requirements for lane-keeping in autonomous driving and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), this study focuses on the radar reflection characteristics of road markings, conducting material selection and structural optimization. By establishing a comparative experimental framework for multiple materials, the reflection performance differences of aluminum foil, iron sheets, aluminum particles, and iron powder at the 77 GHz frequency band were evaluated. The optimal material was then selected for structural size optimization, and quantitative evaluation results for various geometric parameters of the samples were obtained. Experimental data show that aluminum foil exhibits significantly better radar cross-section (RCS) characteristics at 77 GHz compared to the other three materials. Furthermore, a reflective structure made of aluminum foil achieved the best reflection effect, with the height (H) having a greater impact on RCS than the length (L). However, as H increases, the effect on RCS gradually diminishes. Changing the incidence angle (β) of all samples results in a decrease in reflection amplitude, but the attenuation is not particularly significant. This confirms the advantage of embedding such structural additive materials into existing road markings for lane detection. Optimal dimensions were H = 8mm, L = 60mm and W=40mm. This study provides a new approach for the identification of road markings by autonomous driving millimeter-wave radar.

KEYWORDS

Autonomous driving, Millimeter-wave radar, Lane marking, RCS

CITE THIS PAPER

Yu Quan, Lv Jingjing, Guo Huihui, The material and structural design of road markings based on radar reflection characteristics. Journal of Materials, Processing and Design (2025) Vol. 9: 46-58. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/jmpd.2025.090106.

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