Study of the Operating Conditions of an Ultrasonic De-icing System for Plastic Cover Protecting Radar Sensors

This study investigated the enhancement of ultrasonic de-icing performance on plastic radar sensor covers by varying the operating conditions. Ultrasonic de-icing systems can achieve optimal performance when they are driven at the resonant frequency. However, the resonant frequency can change owing to various factors. Furthermore, as the ice layer changes during de-icing, the resonant frequency may shift accordingly. In this study, the change in resonant frequency depending on the presence or absence of an ice layer on the radar sensor cover was experimentally verified. Subsequently, ultrasonic de-icing experiments on the radar sensor cover were conducted repeatedly under varying operating conditions. Each experiment revealed different average driving power and times required to remove an ice layer. A higher average driving power resulted in shorter de-icing times. By changing the operating conditions, the de-icing time for a certain target decreased from 160 s to 65 s. These findings demonstrate that optimizing the operating conditions can enhance the performance of ultrasonic de-icing systems for plastic sensor covers.