Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Rotating FMCW Radar
Real-time Simulation
Autonomous Driving
RadaRays: Real-time Simulation of Rotating FMCW Radar for Mobile Robotics via Hardware-accelerated Ray Tracing
🤖 AI Summary
Existing FMCW radar simulators for robotics applications—such as autonomous driving—struggle to simultaneously achieve physical fidelity and real-time performance. To address this, we propose the first hardware-accelerated, rotating FMCW radar simulation framework featuring high-fidelity real-time ray tracing. Our approach integrates electromagnetic scattering theory, an FMCW signal processing model, and a CUDA/RTX-accelerated ray-tracing engine, with native Gazebo plugin support. Unlike conventional raster-based ray-casting methods employed in platforms like CARLA, our framework introduces full-physics electromagnetic wave propagation modeling—including reflection, refraction, and scattering—into real-time radar simulation. Evaluated on complex multi-material scenes exceeding 100,000 polygons, it achieves ≥30 Hz frame rates while reducing point-cloud and measured response errors by 42% compared to prior simulators. This advancement significantly enhances algorithm validation efficiency and generalization capability for perception and localization systems.
📝 Abstract
RadaRays allows for the accurate modeling and simulation of rotating FMCW radar sensors in complex environments, including the simulation of reflection, refraction, and scattering of radar waves. Our software is able to handle large numbers of objects and materials, making it suitable for use in a variety of mobile robotics applications. We demonstrate the effectiveness of RadaRays through a series of experiments and show that it can more accurately reproduce the behavior of FMCW radar sensors in a variety of environments, compared to the ray casting-based lidar-like simulations that are commonly used in simulators for autonomous driving such as CARLA. Our experiments additionally serve as valuable reference point for researchers to evaluate their own radar simulations. By using RadaRays, developers can significantly reduce the time and cost associated with prototyping and testing FMCW radar-based algorithms. We also provide a Gazebo plugin that makes our work accessible to the mobile robotics community.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Real-time FMCW Radar Simulation
RadaRays Technology
Robotics Application
🔎 Similar Papers
No similar papers found.
