arXiv subjects

Stefan Hägele

Publications and source records attributed to Stefan Hägele.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

RadarFuseNet: Phase-Weighted Complex-Valued Cross-Attention Fusion for Radar Signal Classification

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar is a compact sensing technology that is particularly well suited for perception tasks in situations where vision-based sensors are limited, such as under adverse environmental conditions or occlusion. The complex-valued and nonlinear nature of mmWave radar IQ signals makes complex-valued deep learning a natural choice for extracting relevant information from in-phase and quadrature (IQ) data. However, progress in IQ-based deep learning is limited by the scarcity of annotated radar IQ datasets. In this paper, we propose RadarFuseNet, a bidirectional complex-valued cross-attention fusion network with phase-aware weighting inside the attention mechanism, combining IQ and FFT-derived features extracted by two complex-valued CNN feature extractors. To the best of our knowledge, RadarFuseNet is among the first complex-valued dual-domain fusion frameworks to employ phase-weighted bidirectional cross-attention for radar object classification. Evaluated on our own custom complex-valued IQ radar dataset of occluded objects, RadarFuseNet achieves classification accuracies of 97.70% at 64GHz center frequency and 94.70% at 67GHz center frequency, outperforming all comparison and ablation models.

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arXiv2026

SMCNet: Supervised Surface Material Classification Using mmWave Radar IQ Signals and Complex-valued CNNs

Understanding surface material properties is crucial for enhancing indoor robot perception and indoor digital twinning. However, not all sensor modalities typically employed for this task are capable of reliably capturing detailed surface material characteristics. By analyzing the reflected RF signal from a mmWave radar sensor, it is possible to extract information about the reflective material and its composition from a certain surface. We introduce a mmWave MIMO FMCW radar-based surface material classifier SMCNet, employing a complex-valued Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and complex radar IQ signal input for classifying indoor surface materials. While current radar-based material estimation approaches rely on a fixed sensing distance and constrained setups, our approach incorporates a setup with multiple sensing distances. We trained SMCNet using data from three distinct distances and subsequently tested it on these distances, as well as on two more unseen distances. We reached an overall accuracy of 99.12-99.53 % on our test set. Notably, range FFT pre-processing improved accuracy on unknown distances from 25.25 % to 58.81 % without re-training.

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arXiv2026

RadarCNN: Learning-based Indoor Object Classification from IQ Imaging Radar Data

Radar sensors operating in the mmWave frequency range face challenges when used as indoor perception and imaging devices, primarily due to noise and multipath signal distortions. These distortions often impair the sensors' ability to accurately perceive and image the indoor environment. Nevertheless, this sensor offers distinct advantages over camera and LiDAR sensors. This encompasses the estimation of object reflectivity, known as radar cross-section (RCS), and the ability to penetrate through objects that are thin or have low reflectivity. This results in a 'through-the-wall' sensing capability. Due to the aforementioned disadvantages, most research in the field of imaging radar tends to exclude indoor areas. We introduce a machine learning-based mmWave MIMO FMCW imaging radar object classifier designed to identify small, hand-sized objects in indoor settings, utilizing only radar IQ samples as input. This system achieves 97-99 % accuracy on our test set and maintains approximately 50 % accuracy even under challenging conditions, such as increased background noise and occlusion of sample objects, without the need for adjusting training or pre-processing. This demonstrates the robustness of our approach and offers insights into what needs to be improved in the future to achieve generalization and very high accuracy even in the presence of significant indoor perturbations.

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arXiv2026

ACCOR: Attention-Enhanced Complex-Valued Contrastive Learning for Occluded Object Classification Using mmWave Radar IQ Signals

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) radar provides robust sensing under adverse conditions and can penetrate thin materials for non-visual perception in industrial and robotic settings. Recent work with MIMO mmWave radar has demonstrated its ability to penetrate cardboard packaging for occluded object classification. However, existing models leave room for improvement and extensions across different sensing frequencies. Building on recent work with MIMO radar for occluded object classification, we propose ACCOR, an attention-enhanced complex-valued contrastive learning approach for radar, enabling robust occluded object classification. ACCOR processes complex-valued IQ radar signals via a complex-valued CNN backbone, a multi-head attention layer and a hybrid loss. The hybrid loss combines a weighted cross-entropy term with a supervised contrastive term. We extend an existing 64 GHz dataset with a new 67 GHz subset and evaluate performance across both bands. ACCOR achieves 96.60 % accuracy at 64 GHz and 93.59 % at 67 GHz on 10 objects, surpassing prior radar-specific and adapted image models. Results demonstrate the benefits of integrating complex-valued deep learning, attention, and contrastive learning for mmWave radar-based occluded object classification.

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