Patent ID: 8264399

Claim:
A radar device comprising: a transmission antenna group having a plurality of transmission antennas; a reception antenna group having a plurality of reception antennas; transmission switchover means to transmit transmission waves in a way that sequentially switches over said transmission antennas of said transmission antenna group; virtual correlation value acquiring means to make said reception antenna group which receives reflected waves, reflected from a target, of the transmission waves of said transmission antennas when said transmission switchover means sequentially transmits the transmission waves, function as a virtual sub-array corresponding to said transmission antennas, and to acquire, as a virtual correlation value, a correlation value in a space averaging process which corresponds to said virtual sub-array in a way that corresponds to the number of said transmission antennas from which to transmit the transmission waves; and target detecting means to calculate an average virtual correlation value corresponding to a virtual antenna group that is virtually derived from said reception antenna group through the transmission switchover of said transmission switchover means by executing the space averaging process based on a relative position, to said reception antenna group, of each of said transmission antennas undergoing the transmission switchover of said transmission switchover means with respect to the virtual correlation values, acquired by said virtual correlation value acquiring means, corresponding to said plurality of virtual sub-arrays, and to thus detect the target on the basis of the average virtual correlation value.