NXP's second-generation 77GHz RFCMOS radar transceiver goes into production for ADAS and autonomous driving

On September 28, automotive IC supplier NXP® Semiconductors announced that its second-generation RFCMOS radar transceiver series TEF82xx has been put into production. The transceiver is optimized for fast linear frequency modulation and supports short-range, medium-range and long-range radar applications, including cascaded high-resolution imaging radar. TEF82xx can provide 360-degree sensing for key safety applications, including automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, cross traffic alert and automatic parking.

Image source: NXP

Radar is becoming a key sensing modality for ADAS features in traditional passenger cars as well as safety use cases for MaaS (mobility as a service) applications. On the road to fully autonomous driving, more demanding use cases require higher RF performance to "see" farther (range beyond 300m), as well as finer resolution down to sub-degree levels to accurately detect, separate and classify smaller objects. TEF82xx radar transceivers enable all of the above functions. Combining NXP's scalable S32R radar processor family with the TEF82xx RFCMOS radar transceiver provides the fine angular resolution, processing power and ranging required for imaging radar solutions.

The fully integrated RFCMOS chip contains 3 transmitters, 4 receivers, ADC conversion, phase rotator and low phase noise VCO. NXP TEF82xx also includes built-in safety monitors and external interface functions for MIPI-CSI2 and LVDS, and complies with ISO26262 and ASIL B standards.

Based on NXP's proven RFCMOS technology node and production settings, the receiver has significant improvements over the previous generation, such as more than doubled RF performance, including +6 dB phase noise improvement, 14 dBm output power at -95 dBc/Hz phase noise, and 11.5 dB receiver noise figure. The TEF82xx uses an ultra-compact eWLB package with an exposed die to achieve optimal heat transfer even at high ambient temperatures to meet the demanding thermal conditions in high-performance radar applications. The ultra-short linear frequency modulation return time of only 4µs reduces power-on time, thereby reducing sensor power consumption, and allows tighter linear frequency modulation spacing, thereby improving speed estimation capabilities.

With the comprehensive radar algorithm library provided by the automotive-grade radar software development kit (RSDK), developers can easily build and optimize applications without manually fine-tuning the accelerator software. Engineers can also take advantage of NXP's vast ecosystem of compilers, development environments, MCALs, and free and commercial RTOS support to get the resources needed for faster development.