What does the next-generation radar system developed by Infineon and IMEC look like?

    Radar sensors are extremely important for self-driving cars. Therefore, whether the products launched in this field are cutting-edge is the key to whether a company can become a leading supplier in the automotive industry. Recently, chip manufacturer Infineon announced a cooperation agreement with Belgian microelectronics research center IMEC to jointly develop the next generation of radar systems. If you know the industry status of IMEC, you can understand Infineon's ambition to join forces this time.

    IMEC is a leader in RF technology, IC radar applications and antenna design. Infineon and IMEC will work together to develop 79GHz full CMOS radar chips for automotive applications. So far, the two parties have developed a demonstration integrated circuit based on 28nm CMOS technology and plan to display chip samples in the third quarter of 2016. In addition, according to the plans of both parties, radar products with the sample chip as the core technology will be launched in early 2017 .

    *IMEC was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Leuven , Belgium . It is currently the leading independent research center in Europe. Its research focuses on microelectronics, nanotechnology, design-aided methods, and information and communication system technology (ICT). Its average annual income exceeds 120 million euros, all of which come from licensing agreements and contracts with other partners. IMEC's ​​customers include semiconductor and system manufacturers around the world such as Intel and ARM, as well as national government units such as the European Community and the European Space Agency.

    It is worth mentioning that on June 23, 2015, SMIC signed a cooperation agreement with Huawei, the Belgian Microelectronics Research Center (IMEC) and Qualcomm's subsidiary Qualcomm Global Trading Pte. Ltd. The four companies will jointly invest in the establishment of SMIC New Integrated Circuit R&D (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. The new company will be committed to developing the next generation of CMOS technology.

IMEC provides 79GHz radar chip solution

    Today, vehicles with driver assistance functions are generally equipped with up to three radar systems. In the future, fully autonomous vehicles may be equipped with ten radar systems and more than ten cameras or lidar systems. This is why the EyeQ5 chip that Mobileye plans to launch supports up to 20 sensor accesses in terms of sensor fusion function.

     Ralf Bornefeld, Vice President and General Manager of Infineon's Sensing & Control Division, pointed out that these radars, cameras or lidars form a 360° panoramic sensor imaging system, which is like a "safety barrier" wrapped around the car. He also revealed that Infineon also plans to develop a single-chip CMOS radar sensor to be used in automatic parking systems that have high requirements for close-range sensing. However, Bornefeld also pointed out that " radars built on full CMOS technology are not a panacea that can replace other radar products ."

• The first is the cost issue. Unless the market demand is very high, the production cost of full CMOS radar chips is still very high compared to the mainstream traditional SiGe bipolar transistor manufacturing process;

• Secondly, highly integrated CMOS radar chips are suitable for products that do not require high application flexibility. In other words, the higher the degree of standardization, the more advantages full CMOS radars will have over products built on SiGe technology;

• Finally, 28nm full CMOS radar chips cannot meet the needs of long-distance (300m) automotive radars. Therefore, if radar products need to be more flexible in application, then radar chips based on SiGe may still be the mainstream technology in the market, at least in the next 10 years.

    Therefore, Bornefeld also said, " Infineon does not intend to place all its bets on CMOS technology. In the future, radar chip products based on SiGe and CMOS technologies will coexist in the market ."

    Compared with the more mature 24GHz radar chip technology, the 79GHz radar performs better in detection angle and frequency resolution. Higher frequency resolution can use the Doppler effect to obtain more accurate vehicle speed data. According to Wim Van Thillo, head of IMEC's ​​visual system project, the sensor samples based on this radar chip planned to be launched in the future will integrate MIMO antennas to achieve recognition of large objects, pedestrians and bicycles. In other words, IMEC is already developing radar sensors with machine learning capabilities.

    According to Wim Van Thillo, head of R&D for perception systems at IMEC, in addition to developing a 28nm 79GHz full CMOS radar chip with Infineon, IMEC is also conducting research on a 140GHz high-frequency radar chip. At this frequency, the wavelength of the radio waves emitted by the radar is 2.2mm. High range resolution is one of the key indicators for measuring radar imaging quality. To achieve high range resolution, the radar's instantaneous signal bandwidth must be large. Therefore, how to make the signal bandwidth of a radar chip with an area of ​​only 1 square millimeter exceed 4GHz is a problem that IMEC is currently working on.

    In the future, accurate information about vehicle speed will be obtained through signal processing, and algorithms capable of pattern recognition and machine learning will be integrated on radar chips, which means that radars will also be able to identify and distinguish pedestrians, bicycles, and other motor vehicles through micro-Doppler features. If these radars with machine learning capabilities are integrated with other sensors such as cameras and lidar, it will be equivalent to adding another layer of safety for self-driving cars.

Car Cloud Summary

    According to the current development trend, the market for radar sensors is gradually growing. As we all know, 20 OEMs in the United States have promised to add functions similar to automatic emergency braking to the models sold on the market starting from 2022, and radar sensors are being sought after by car companies and suppliers because of their low cost (cheaper than camera-based visual recognition sensors). Speaking of this, I think of the EyeQ5 chip that Mobileye plans to launch. The quiet change in the technical landscape of the autonomous driving market is probably the internal motivation for Mobileye to move from visual recognition to sensor fusion.