A dual radiometer system for traffic monitoring

In this paper a experimental radiometer setup is presented consisting of two identical total power radiometers operating at 38 GHz. This setup can be used for traffic density monitoring and velocity measurement of vehicles. A vehicle is detected by the radiometer sensor due to the temperature difference between the vehicle and the ambient temperature, where the different temperature characteristics by the vehicle are caused by reflections of the low sky temperature. The velocity of a vehicle passing the system is calculated by the measured time period needed by the vehicle in order to pass the two radiometer sensors using a correlation function between the two responses. Within this paper a brief description of the realized sensor system and first characteristic measurements are shown. The results demonstrate the functionality of this novel concept.