79GHz radar for automotive applications

3 unique advantages

Our radar sensor solution offers three main advantages:

• Extremely robust, working in all imaginable conditions from darkness, rain, fog, dirt and heat as well as adverse lighting conditions such as glaring sun.
• Fully-sealed and can be invisibly mounted, a huge plus for aesthetics but more importantly for privacy, where cameras are at a disadvantage.
• Very small form factor.

We have been working on 28nm CMOS mm-wave chips for the past several years, modeling parasitic effects at mm-wave frequencies. We gain insights from each design iteration that improve the performance of the next chip design.

Access our expertise and become a partner in our research on:

• System design to derive specifications.
• IC design to develop radar sensor SoC (systems-on-chip), integrating RF and mm-wave ICs, fast and low-power ADCs, high-speed dedicated digital processing.
• Antenna and module design through intimate co-design of antenna module and RF IC.
• Validation and demonstration to close the learning cycle

Compact, high-resolution, low cost, efficient

Imec develops the key technologies to realize next-generation radar systems for autonomous driving:

• Compact: CMOS radar is so compact that it can be integrated in almost any location in a car – not just in the car bumper, but also in smaller spaces such as doors.
• High resolution: in range, angular and Doppler domain.
• Low cost: plain CMOS, the same technology that makes your smartphone twice as cool every year; cheaper than SiGe BiCMOS when high volumes are needed.
• Low power consumption.

We aim to develop a radar sensing solution capable of avoiding collision with pedestrians that features the following specifications:

• 120-degree field-of-view
• range of 30 meters
• range resolution of 7.5cm
• maximum velocity of 50km/h
• velocity resolution of 1km/h
• angular resolution of 10 degrees
• latency of 10 milliseconds

Phase-modulated radar vs. frequency-modulated radar

We compare the suitability of phase-modulated vs. frequency modulated-radar for automotive solutions.

Frequency modulated radar is traditionally used in the automotive industry, a trend that Phase Modulated Continuous Wave (PMWC) radar disrupts. PMWC is ideal for a CMOS implementation because it requires a digital-intensive implementation, and it is also resistant to interference. We are in the process of testing PMCW radar to further explore its possible uses.