The story of the birth of TI mmWave technology - the road to innovation

The TI development team successfully developed the world's first millimeter-wave radar SoC, after which they integrated this technology into automobiles and made more cars safer.

Imagine a low-cost, low-power radar sensor that could be mounted on a firefighter’s helmet to detect unconscious or incapacitated people through walls and smoke.

Engineers at Texas Instruments have created a millimeter-wave radar sensor that could one day be able to "see" walls or other obstacles and provide users with audible alerts based on the perception of 3D imaging.

"Millimeter waves have the ability to penetrate smoke or drywall," said Brian, a member of TI's core development team for millimeter wave technology. "The challenge for rescue applications is that when the rescuer is moving, they need to detect the breathing of an incapacitated casualty, and only millimeter wave radar can meet this requirement."

Firefighters using millimeter wave technology

Today, automotive customers are also using similar technologies, such as reversing radar, vehicle personnel detection, elderly fall detection, and robot automatic navigation.

When a small R&D team began working on millimeter wave technology in 2009, they had no idea how many applications the technology would one day enable. The original intention was to provide a radar sensor that was cheap enough to be integrated into low-cost vehicles. Before this technology, radar sensors were only available in very expensive cars.

Radar and How It Works

The concept of radio detection and ranging, which later became the acronym RADAR, was invented during World War II to help detect enemy movements and has been used extensively since then. In addition to its groundbreaking military uses, radar technology enables air and ground traffic control, weather forecasting, medical monitoring, and advanced automotive safety features.

Many radar systems in the past were large and expensive, with military-grade products costing millions of dollars, measuring hundreds of feet in size, and operating at low frequencies, so imaging accuracy was much lower.

TI mmWave radar sensors operate at 60GHz or 77GHz and have higher accuracy. They are small and compact, while producing images so clear that you can see the outlines of objects and classify them.

Millimeter wave radar works by transmitting a waveform, then bouncing it back and measuring the time difference, a technology that is robust and can mitigate interference, even in harsh environmental conditions.

In a car occupant monitoring, the waveform will be transmitted from the roof to the cabin of the parked car. If a baby or toddler is in the car, the waveform will detect changes in the chest cavity, detect breathing, and connect to the CPU to notify the driver.

CMOS Challenges

When the project started in 2009, the team was prepared to try it with CMOS technology because they knew that this underlying technology would make millimeter wave radar so cheap that it could be adopted by the masses. The technology, which was once very expensive, could now be easily incorporated into a $20,000 car.

To familiarize themselves with millimeter wave technology, the team worked from 2009 to 2012 to develop a 160 GHz radar for very short-range communications.

At that time, no one in the world had built such a system using CMOS technology.

"Developing millimeter-wave radar using CMOS technology is extremely innovative because it requires a lot of innovation in equipment, circuits, and test solutions," said Brian.

Brian recalls that the competitive landscape for radar equipment was very tough at the time. "Our competitors had state-of-the-art automotive radar solutions made with SiGe processes, which were more expensive and difficult to integrate. At TI, we took a different path and focused on using advanced CMOS technologies because they had a better cost structure, lower power consumption and potentially higher performance."

It took the group three years to complete the first project. By early 2012, they had demonstrated that they could build a millimeter-wave system in CMOS, and they were trying to find the right business opportunity to bring the technology to market.

“We looked at whether we could take automotive radar and put it in ADAS and disrupt that market,” Brian said. “Bringing in CMOS and really achieving higher performance, lower cost and lower power consumption at the same time.”

Making TI mmWave more affordable

At Texas Instruments, our passion is to create a better world by making electronics more affordable through semiconductor technology. Innovations like mmWave showcase our passion. Many TI engineers worked for decades to lay the foundation for today's breakthrough, and the innovators who developed this technology had a strong desire to beat the competition and make it affordable for the low- and mid-range automotive markets.

Vijay said that the nickname of the mmWave R&D team is JDI, which stands for "Just Do It", and this is exactly the attitude needed to achieve the 9-year innovation journey.

“At the time, CMOS analog design was considered impossible,” said Vijay, a core team member. “In analog design, a lot of people couldn’t do it.”

Like many other pioneers in TI's history, they did not back down from challenges. During their research and development, they obtained 24 patents and created a technology that made it possible for people to integrate affordable TI mmWave radar systems into mid- and low-end vehicles for the first time to improve safety.

Srinath, one of its core members, said: "Just Do It is the way our team works. To do this, you need to have confidence in your skills, as well as risk management capabilities and a fear of failure."

Baher, who leads the team, said JDI's nickname did not come from millimeter wave. This is a team that has earned the nickname by being in the wireless business since 1998.

“The JDI stayed with the team, in a sense, as a metaphor for, ‘If it works — we’re the ones who are going to do it,’” Baher recalls. “It had grit and intensity, but also a lot of depth and care, and an expectation of success.”

Brian's best friend died in a car accident. "I believe highly automated driving technology has the potential to prevent fatal accidents like this."

Brian said that when he began developing millimeter wave technology, the number one cause of death in his age group was accidents, including car accidents.

“The potential environmental, economic and quality-of-life benefits of assisted and automated driving are matched by few other technologies. Radar is only a small part of highly automated driving, but it is an essential part.”

Achieving a higher level of security

“We’ve taken something that used to be military technology and turned it into something that you can actually hold, that’s almost finger-sized, and that’s inexpensive and good,” Vijay said.

In the 1980s, a team proposed automotive radar to TI's leadership. But the technology never gained traction at the time because the $500 price tag was not competitive.

Baher said the millimeter wave project originated from the first R&D projects at Kilby Labs, a research center named after Jack Kilby, the inventor of the integrated circuit in 1958. The project spans multiple disciplines, including devices, modeling and processes, circuit design and architecture, packaging technology, system knowledge, radio frequency (RF) imaging, antennas, and imaging mathematics. "Because of this, there is plenty of innovation when there are many boundaries to cross," Baher said.

Brian said that when the project started in 2009, it was about exploring how to build a millimeter wave system, how to productize it, and how to implement all of this in CMOS technology.

The team took on the daunting challenge of designing in CMOS because they knew this foundational part would make this technology accessible to the masses. It was a device that would allow them to bring radar detection capabilities, which were once prohibitively expensive.

Baher, who leads the team, said the team had the right mix of expertise from the start.

“Our attitude is right. We have a solid foundation, a desire to learn new things, and we are not afraid to conquer new areas in a short period of time.

Integrated Technology

After completing the business case, engineers started a new project to develop automotive radar chipsets in mid-2012. The market was already disrupted because Europe had changed regulations governing automotive radars.

Before 2012, forward-looking or long-range radars on cars operated at 77 GHz. Corner radars for blind spot detection were primarily 24 GHz. Europe changed regulations to move the 24 GHz span down, meaning they had to transition to 77 GHz.

The first system started chip import in 2013 in cooperation with OEM.

“After that, we started defining and implementing our first batch of production silicon,” Brian said. “It took about two years of additional technology development, and then three years to get to production.”

Once the team demonstrated the ability to build the system on a CMOS platform, they were able to integrate more digital technologies.

“Instead of having multiple separate front-end components and then a microcontroller and a DSP, we are able to provide a complete system-on-chip in one chip,” Brian said. “Then, with the front-end radar transceiver, we can build enough signal chains into it so that we can basically do all the radar configuration and signal processing in a single chip.”

This makes the radar much simpler to use, as it does not require direct intervention from an external host during operation, but still retains all the flexibility required of the final system.

The team also spends time innovating low-cost testing solutions and how to redefine the way equipment monitors itself. Brian says the self-monitoring capability is critical because it means our customers can achieve the highest level of functional safety.

Simplified radar

Deploying radar once required extensive RF design and expertise. Integrating the right antenna, RF, analog, digital processors and a suitable interface required an expensive and cumbersome design. But TI mmWave technology has opened the door to many creative plug-and-play solutions. In addition to standard automotive applications, many industrial and commercial applications can benefit from easy-to-use TI mmWave sensors. For example, TI mmWave technology can be used to detect falls in the elderly to alert caregivers. It can enable robots to navigate complex factory environments. As part of a security system, it can detect intruders through walls.