Millimeter wave radar prices reduced

Recently, automotive millimeter-wave radar chip manufacturers are providing lower-cost 77GHz millimeter-wave radar to accelerate the transition of millimeter-wave radar from 24GHz to 77GHz. Previously, due to the large gap in specifications, the price of 77GHz radar chips in the market was at least twice that of 24GHz.

The price reduction of 77GHz products reflects the trend of product upgrading. What is the market structure of millimeter wave chips? Who will be the next successor of 77GHz millimeter wave radar?

Behind the price reduction is replacement

Accelerating the popularization of 77GHz products is an upgrade of vehicle radar systems. The rapid development of autonomous driving technology has put forward higher requirements for automotive radar in terms of resolution, detection accuracy and reliability. The existing frequency planning of the 24GHz band cannot meet the technological development needs of automotive radar, and there is an urgent need to plan a larger How often the bandwidth is used. In 2015, the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-15) made relevant resolutions to divide the 76-81GHz frequency band into a globally coordinated frequency band for automotive radar. The 2019 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-19) divided the 24.25-27.5GHz frequency band into a globally coordinated 5G millimeter wave frequency. Some countries in the world have gradually guided the frequency band of automotive radar to migrate to the higher 77GHz frequency band.

As global mobile communication applications continue to consume "lower" frequency spectrum and the frequency of vehicle radar systems begins to transition to the 77 and 79 GHz millimeter wave spectrum with shorter wavelengths, Japan no longer uses 24GHz ultra-wideband vehicle radar technology. According to the timetables set by regional standards organizations ETSI and FCC respectively, it will be gradually phased out in Europe and the United States and replaced by higher-frequency narrowband 77GHz and ultra-wideband 79GHz vehicle radar systems.

From the perspective of the Chinese market, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a document that starting from March 1, 2022, it will no longer accept and approve applications for radio transmission equipment model approval of automotive radars in the 24.25-26.65GHz frequency band, that is, automotive radars using this frequency band can no longer be produced and imported. Starting from January 1, 2024, the production or import of vehicle-mounted radar equipment in the 24.25-26.65GHz frequency band for domestic sales will be stopped. At the same time, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has authorized the Automobile Association to organize industrial units to carry out research and testing of 77-81GHz automotive millimeter wave radar in Hefei City, Anhui Province, Dalian City, Liaoning Province, Taizhou City, Jiangsu Province, and Mianyang City, Sichuan Province.

Against this background, global automotive millimeter wave radar companies have begun to transform to 77GHz products. From an automaker's perspective, the perception capabilities of a high-spec 77GHz front-facing radar paired with existing cameras and Tesla's software integration capabilities should be superior to a full vision approach.

Previously, Tesla claimed that its autonomous driving level could reach L4. Tesla did not add millimeter wave radar to its vehicles, but used a full visual sensing solution. However, Tesla’s L2+ full vision approach has been questioned and has not been widely adopted by the global supply chain. Due to the supply shortage of mainstream front-facing radar, the cost of this solution remains high for Tesla. 2022 Q4 Tesla is rumored to reintroduce millimeter wave radar in its vehicles. Tesla's return to radar has further strengthened the rigid demand trend for automotive millimeter wave radar and will bring new opportunities to the millimeter wave radar market.

In addition to Tesla, the domestic market is also an observation point worthy of attention. Sources indicate that some car manufacturers prefer to use millimeter-wave radar in their new models due to concerns about LiDAR stability. However, the cost of China's lidar continues to fall and the technology continues to advance. Therefore, the tug-of-war between Chinese radar and lidar may reach a climax in 2023.

Millimeter wave radar is on the rise again

With the popularity of automotive electronics, especially ADAS and L2+ autonomous driving, millimeter-wave radar has become a necessary sensing element.

Millimeter wave radar can emit signals with wavelengths on the order of millimeter. In the electromagnetic spectrum, this wavelength is considered a short wavelength, and one of the advantages of this technology is the small size of system components (such as antennas) required to process millimeter wave signals. Another advantage of short wavelengths is high accuracy. Millimeter wave systems operating at 76–81GHz (corresponding to a wavelength of approximately 4mm) will be able to detect movements as small as a few tenths of a millimeter.

A complete millimeter-wave radar system includes transmit (TX) and receive (RX) radio frequency (RF) components, as well as analog components such as clocks, as well as analog- to-digital converters  (ADCs), microcontrollers  (MCUs), and digital signal processors  ( DSP ) and other digital components. The millimeter-wave radar emits waves outward through the vibrator, bounces off after hitting the object, and is received by the receiving antenna. After sampling, filtering, and conversion, the distance ahead is calculated based on the time difference, and the vehicle speed is calculated through the Doppler effect ; three types of detection The range radars each assume different ADAS functions.

The industry has partially reached a consensus on how many millimeter-wave radars a car needs to be equipped with. The industry divides the configuration of millimeter wave radars differently based on the main functions of different levels of autonomous driving. L1 level requires 2SRR+1LRR; L2 requires 2SRR+1LRR; L3 requires 4SRR+1LRR; L4 requires 6SRR+1LRR; L5 requires 6SRR+ 2LRR. NVIDIA was the first to release the DRIVE Hyperion 8 reference design platform in November 2021, which can meet the L4 autonomous driving capability requirements. In the sensor suite of the entire reference design platform, 9 millimeter wave radars alone are configured, including 1 forward imaging radar. , 2 forward long-range radars, 6 corner radars, 12 cameras, and 1 lidar to achieve sufficient sensory redundancy.

In the global millimeter wave radar market, countries such as Germany, the United States, and Japan dominate. The key millimeter-wave core chips are almost monopolized by international semiconductor companies such as Texas Instruments, Infineon, NXP, ADI , ST, Fujitsu, ON Semiconductor, and Renesas .

In 2022, Renesas Electronics announced its official entry into the automotive millimeter-wave radar market, launching the first 4-transmit, 4-receive, 76-81GHz monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC). Infineon will release a 76-81GHz radar MMIC series based on 28nm CMOS technology in 2022. The product further improves system-level performance and integration. In 2022, Texas Instruments launched a new generation of millimeter-wave radar single-chip SoC solution AWR2944, which can use a single SoC solution to solve millimeter-wave radar sensors that were previously composed of three subsystems .

It will take at least nearly five years to develop a car-grade millimeter wave radar, which includes conducting a large number of engineering tests and several non-mass production iterations to continue to improve the safety, reliability and consistency of millimeter wave radar. sex. There are certain challenges for domestic millimeter-wave radar manufacturers that are in a state of catching up. Fortunately, domestic chip suppliers have also begun to accumulate a certain amount of experience, such as CMOS suppliers China Electronics Technology, Gatland, Aanda Technology, etc.; domestic chip suppliers are also involved SoC chip manufacturers include Wenzhi Microelectronics, Shengde Microelectronics, Silicon Microelectronics, etc.

Domestic millimeter wave radar companies have also made breakthroughs this year. Sijie Microelectronics Co., Ltd. announced the completion of a new round of capital increase, exclusively invested by Sunshine Fusion Capital. Founded in 2016, Sijie Microelectronics is a millimeter-wave radar chip and technology developer. The funds raised in this round will be used to accelerate the application of Sijie Microelectronics in millimeter-wave radar sensors in the consumer, industrial, and automotive fields. . Nav Electronics' forward-facing 77GHz millimeter-wave radar NOVA77GF-B Plus was designated by a leading domestic new energy car company and completed the designation announcement in December. Nav Electronics' millimeter-wave radar products have been fully covered in the mass production of domestic and foreign mainstream models such as passenger cars, new energy heavy trucks, pickup trucks, and SUVs, and have entered the stage of large-scale shipments.

The next evolution of millimeter wave radar

In the future, millimeter-wave radar will generally develop towards higher frequency bands, more chip integration, and 4D millimeter-wave radar. At the same time, multi-sensor fusion and redundant design will become the mainstream trend in the future. 4D millimeter wave radar enlarges the antenna array. In addition to increasing height information, it can also provide richer point cloud information. When the point cloud information is rich enough, you can learn from the signal processing method of lidar, using methods similar to Voxelnet, 3D or 2D networks such as CenterPoint and PointPillar are used for feature extraction and recognition.

4D millimeter-wave radar has the advantages of high detection, higher point cloud mass density, longer detection range, and target classification of static obstacles. It is becoming the key development direction of the industry's next-generation millimeter-wave radar. 4D millimeter wave radar technology breaks through the limitations of traditional vehicle radar and can simultaneously detect the distance, speed, horizontal azimuth and pitch azimuth of the target with very high resolution. The longest detection range of 4D millimeter wave radar technology can reach more than 300 meters, which is farther than lidar and visual sensors . The 4D millimeter wave radar system has a high horizontal angular resolution, usually reaching an angular resolution of 1°, and can distinguish two close vehicles at a distance of 300m. The 4D millimeter-wave radar system can measure pitch angles, achieve an angular resolution better than 2°, and can distinguish ground objects and overpasses at 150m. When there are crossing vehicles and pedestrians and Doppler is zero or very low, the target can be effectively identified through high-precision horizontal angle and high-precision pitch angle 4D millimeter wave radar technology. The target point cloud of 4D millimeter wave radar technology is denser and more information-rich, making it more suitable to be combined with a deep learning framework.