The development of complex sensing technology for the automotive industry is proceeding rapidly to increase road safety and reduce traffic accidents.
Automotive radar has been a critical element of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) for its reliable operation—measuring range, speed and angle-of-arrival over a long distance—under almost any environmental conditions. It will remain even more critical for future AD vehicles of L2+ and beyond, as the 4D imaging radar technology has emerged to deliver image-like fine resolution point clouds for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) or demanding use cases, such as lost-parcel detection at distance.
For development teams to move from a proof-of-concept prototype to a radar application that is ready for series production with fine-tuned performance parameters fulfilling specific OEM requirements, working collaboratively with one of NXP’s partners, such as NXP Gold Partner smartmicro, may be an attractive option for improved time-to-market, reduced risks or even addressing temporary resource constraints.
In my previous blog, Creating the 360-Degree Vehicle Safety Cocoon with Automotive Radar, I outlined how smartmicro, the specialist in automotive radar technology, uses the NXP S32R294 radar microcontroller and the TEF82xx RF transceiver to offer a selection of off-the-shelf solutions that cover anything from corner radar with 3 Tx and 4 Rx up to long-range front-facing radar with the 6 Tx and 8 Rx configuration.
Continuing the successful collaboration with NXP, smartmicro has made an important next step and developed a 4D imaging radar sensor with NXP’s 6th generation flagship radar processor S32R45 that cascades four TEF8232 transceivers with a total of 192 virtual channels (12 Tx, 16 Rx) to deliver one-degree angular resolution at a distance up to 300 meters. The radar sensor is designed primarily for automotive applications and delivers a high resolution point cloud with up to 20,000 points per second. Its capability to upgrade to integrated object tracking or occupancy grid mapping also makes it a good fit for adjacent applications, such as traffic management for ITS systems.
4D imaging radar sensor, powered by the state-of-the-art radar chipset of NXP, delivers equal to or better performance than the massive MIMO radar concepts on the market, which require up to 12 times the antenna count. By leveraging the leading RF-CMOS transceivers, advanced radar processing algorithms and highly efficient radar hardware acceleration, NXP takes a smart performance scaling approach, in contrast to brute force scaling with sheer antenna count, to pave a commercially viable path towards automotive volume production.
The commercial attractiveness of NXP's 4D imaging radar solution lies within its 3-in-1 multi-mode concurrent sensing capability across short, mid and long range. This removes the need for multiple sensors to cover different operating modes and eliminates the application tradeoffs imposed by operating mode switching. Customers thus enjoy the outstanding system performance at optimized cost.
NXP will continue to work closely with its ecosystem partners, such as the NXP Gold Partner smartmicro, and enable demonstration of technology benefits in real application setup and provision of high quality engineering services, whenever desired, to NXP customers and allow them to focus on what matters most for their business success in the growing AD market.
Based in Hamburg, Germany, Huanyu has many years of experience in the automotive semiconductor industry, having worked in car access and infotainment prior to his current role in radar and V2X. Huanyu is passionate about continuously improving the safety and comfort of cars and achieving "Vision Zero" through the introduction of innovative technologies.
