A method of operating a
radar system (14), in particular a
radar system (14) for a vehicle (10), a
radar system (14), a driver assistance system (12) and a vehicle (10). In the method, at least one electromagnetic radar
signal (22) is transmitted from at least one transmitting
antenna element (34) of the radar system (14). At least one electromagnetic
echo signal (40) generated by at least one radar
signal (22) reflected from at least one target (20) in a
field of view of the radar system (14) is received by at least one receiving
antenna element (38) and converted into received data (72) adapted for
signal processing. The radar system (14) is operated as a
MIMO radar comprising a plurality of transmit antenna elements (34) and a plurality of receive antenna elements (38), where the transmit antenna elements (34) and the receive antenna elements (38) generate a
virtual antenna array having a plurality of virtual antenna elements for receiving echo signals (40) during
MIMO operation of the radar system (14). For at least a portion of the virtual
antenna element, amplitude information and phase information are determined from at least a portion of the received data, respectively, by performing at least one two-dimensional
fast Fourier transform. At least one array
data set is determined that includes at least amplitude information and phase information for at least a portion of the virtual antenna elements. At least a portion of the data of the at least one array
data set is fed to at least one neural network (64), with which at least one piece of positional information of the at least one detected target (20) is determined.