Patent ID: 7289058

Claim:
A radar apparatus which comprises a plurality of antennas having identical antenna characteristics and arranged at unequally spaced intervals in a single row, a transmitter for transmitting a radio wave from at least one antenna selected from among the plurality of antennas, a receiver for receiving received signals representing reflected waves of the transmitted radio wave at each of the antennas, and a signal processing unit for performing digital beam forming with a plurality of received signal channels derived from the received signals, the radar apparatus further comprising: a first selector switch for sequentially supplying a transmit signal of the radio waves to the antennas during continued multiple periods by connecting a selected antenna as a transmitting antenna with the transmitter in each of the continued multiple periods; and a second selector switch for sequentially supplying the received signals to the receiver in each of the continued multiple periods by sequentially connecting selected antennas as receiving antennas with the receiver in each of the continued multiple periods, and wherein: each of the receiving antennas is assigned to one of the receiving signal channels numbered from 1 to N, a number of which is larger than a number of antennas, for each of the continued multiple periods with reference to the transmitting antenna of the same period, wherein the signal processing unit performs digital beam forming with a first receiving signal channels group and a second receiving signal channels group respectively.