Pulse Doppler Radar Simulation for Range and Velocity Estimation using MATLAB

This work presents a MATLAB-based Pulse-Doppler radar simulation framework designed to estimate the range and velocity of moving vehicles using video input. The system integrates fundamental image processing techniques—including grayscale conversion, binary thresholding, Canny edge detection, and background subtraction—to extract moving targets from sequential frames. A background model is generated from the initial frames, and morphological filtering combined with connected component analysis is used to isolate and track the moving car. The extracted motion parameters are mapped into radar-based measurements, where target range and velocity are computed from positional changes across frames. Additionally, the system simulates signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) using standard radar equations to emulate realistic detection conditions. Synthetic radar signals are generated to produce Range-Doppler maps, enabling visualization of target motion in joint time–frequency space. The simulation continuously updates target trajectories and displays annotated video frames with real-time range, velocity, and SNR overlays. Complementary plots of target tracking, including range evolution, velocity profiles, SNR variation, and range-velocity maps, offer deeper insight into detection performance. Overall, the proposed MATLAB framework provides a comprehensive and visually interpretable environment for studying automotive Pulse-Doppler radar behavior using affordable video-based simulation.

Keywords: Pulse-Doppler Radar, Range-Velocity Estimation, Image Processing, MATLAB Simulation.