Patent ID: 8854921

Claim:
A method for detecting an object within a surrounding area of a vehicle, comprising: repeatedly transmitting wave pulses into the surrounding area; repeatedly receiving wave pulses which are the transmitted wave pulses reflected by the object; detecting the object with the aid of a signal representation of the received wave pulses, wherein the detecting of the object includes: ascertaining at least one signal characteristic of a first received wave pulse; and one of (i) comparing a curve of the signal characteristic of the first received wave pulse to a curve of a signal characteristic of a further received wave pulse received after the first received wave pulse, location information of the object being corrected based on the comparison, or (ii) ascertaining one of a noise power or a propagation time as the signal characteristic of the first received wave pulse, providing threshold values as a function of the one of the noise power or the propagation time, and discretizing the curve of the further received wave pulse in accordance with the threshold values.