Automotive radar application for structural health monitoring

Monitoring of communication and residential infrastructures, such as buildings, bridges and tunnels, has always been important to ensure the safety of citizens. In particular, it is of interest to verify the level of mechanical stress to which bridges and buildings are subjected during earthquakes, measuring the oscillations that the structure undergoes during the seismic event, in order to verify the overcoming of safety thresholds, in which stability may be impaired. In this paper the mmWave radars designed for the automotive world is taken into account, since it allows high precision measurements at a relatively low cost. mmWave radars are able to detect vibrations of the order of tens of microns and, therefore, are very useful for monitoring buildings. Furthermore, using MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) mmWave radars, it is possible to implement the Beamforming technology for the spatial shaping of the radio beam, in order to detect more targets simultaneously. In this way it is possible to monitor multiple buildings or structures simultaneously, or different parts of the same structure with a single sensor. The objective of the present work is to show the applicability of automotive radar to the measurement of oscillations suffered by buildings and bridges, in order to be used as a monitoring tool in the event of earthquakes. Results of software simulations, laboratory test and real measurements on infrastructures are provided.