4D Millimeter-Wave Radar in Autonomous Driving: A Survey

The 4D millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar, capable of measuring the range, azimuth, elevation, and velocity of targets, has attracted considerable interest in the autonomous driving community. This is attributed to its robustness in extreme environments and outstanding velocity and elevation measurement capabilities. However, despite the rapid development of research related to its sensing theory and application, there is a notable lack of surveys on the topic of 4D mmWave radar. To address this gap and foster future research in this area, this paper presents a comprehensive survey on the use of 4D mmWave radar in autonomous driving. Reviews on the theoretical background and progress of 4D mmWave radars are presented first, including the signal processing flow, resolution improvement ways, extrinsic calibration process, and point cloud generation methods. Then it introduces related datasets and application algorithms in autonomous driving perception and localization and mapping tasks. Finally, this paper concludes by predicting future trends in the field of 4D mmWave radar. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey specifically for the 4D mmWave radar.