Calterah's Andes cascade solution defines a new paradigm for 4D millimeter-wave radar

Calterah's millimeter-wave radar SoC family evolves again, with high-performance solutions targeting the global market

On June 6, at "Catland Day 2024", Caltland released a new millimeter-wave radar chip platform, technology and solutions, representing the further evolution of Caltland's millimeter-wave radar SoC family to cope with the wave of accelerated development of global automotive intelligence.

Challenging “Andes” and defining a new paradigm for imaging radar development

With the continuous development of automotive ADAS technology, traditional on-board 3D millimeter-wave radar is moving towards 4D and imaging. Calterah Andes SoC is designed for 4D imaging millimeter-wave radar.

Calterah uses CMOS technology to innovatively integrate the 4-transmitter, 4-receiver RF chip and computing chip of millimeter-wave radar into a SoC chip, and supports flexible chip-to-chip cascading. When downstream radar manufacturers develop imaging radars, they can quickly create imaging radar products with different performance by selecting different numbers of SoCs for cascading, which not only reduces material costs, but also simplifies the development process, redefines the imaging radar R&D paradigm, and provides new momentum for its mass production.

Andes SoC chip and Andes SoC two-chip cascade reference design

Andes chip's core parameters performance:

•RF module: supports continuous frequency sweep range of 76 GHz to 81 GHz; typical maximum output power of 14 dBm; phase noise of -95 dBc/Hz (@ 1MHz); integrates 7-bit phase shifter based on transmission line design and high-performance ADC; can flexibly generate various waveforms and provide precise digital compensation and other functions.

• Computing module: Integrated Quad-core CPU, providing more than 2500 DMIPS computing power; RSP radar signal processor, which can realize efficient processing of radar signals; high-performance DSP, which is convenient for developers to deploy custom algorithms and has greater flexibility.

The more transceiver channels a 4D imaging radar has, the stronger its perception performance will be, but the cost and size will also increase accordingly, and when the number of channels reaches a certain level, the performance improvement will also be significantly reduced. Gatland believes that the two-chip cascade solution with 8 transmitters and 8 receivers is the best choice for current 4D imaging radars, achieving a balance between performance, cost and size.

In this event, Calterah launched a two-chip cascade reference design based on two Andes SoC chips. Compared with the traditional "two types, a total of three chips" imaging radar solution, the Andes two-chip cascade solution has obvious advantages in both RF and computing modules. It not only has up to 64 MIMO channels, 14dBm transmission energy, 5360 DMIPS CPU computing power, 11 MiB on-chip memory, but also a wider operating temperature range and more high-speed transmission interfaces, making it easier for millimeter-wave radar manufacturers to quickly create high-performance 4D imaging radars with cost advantages.

Climbing the Kunlun, establishing a new frontier for automotive perception

With the rapid development of smart cars, new applications such as electric doors with automatic obstacle avoidance, occupant status and health detection, child forgotten detection in the car, and vehicle intrusion detection are constantly emerging, and the requirements for on-board millimeter-wave radars are increasing: lower power consumption, smaller size, and excellent angular and spatial resolution capabilities are required.

At this event, Caltland's Kunlun automotive-grade millimeter-wave radar SoC platform made its debut, including two series of SoC chips: the 77 GHz Kunlun-USRR and the 60 GHz Lancang-USRR.

Kunlun automotive grade millimeter wave radar SoC platform

The SoCs of the Kunlun platform all adopt an integrated design of RF and computing modules. Its RF module has up to 6 Tx and 6 Rx channels, far exceeding the common 2 Tx 3 Rx and 2 Tx 4 Rx millimeter-wave radar RF chips. The excellent RF performance can not only meet the requirements of high-precision perception for emerging applications such as electric doors, in-cabin baby detection, and vehicle intrusion detection, but the 77GHz Kunlun-USRR SoC can also cover the use scenarios of ADAS radars.

The Kunlun platform's SoC uses a dual-threaded RSP radar signal processor based on the sequencer scheduler architecture to replace the traditional BBA baseband accelerator, making radar signal processing more efficient and more flexible. The dual-core CPU supports single-precision floating-point FPU, I-Cache, D-Cache, and DCCM, and supports a lock-step mechanism to meet ASIL-D functional safety standards. While providing powerful performance, the Kunlun platform's SoC also supports a low-power deep sleep mode with a rated power consumption of less than 1W (25% Duty Cycle), providing strong support for emerging applications such as sentinel mode.

The Kunlun-USRR/Lancang-USRR SoC chip series both provide AiP packaged integrated on-chip antenna versions, which make the radar module more compact while ensuring excellent spatial resolution performance. It can adapt to various harsh installation environments, and drive the vehicle's perception capabilities from the single field of ADAS to the inside and outside of the vehicle body, expanding the boundaries of "vehicle perception."

In addition, Calterah also released a new millimeter wave packaging technology, ROP® (Radiator-on-Package), at the event. This technology transmits the signal directly to the waveguide antenna system through the radiator, which not only solves the problem of large antenna feed line loss in traditional standard packaging technology, but also has higher channel isolation than AiP (Antenna-in-Package) technology, allowing the radar to achieve a longer detection distance and a wider FOV. In the future, ROP® packaging technology will be applied to Alps-Pro and Andes series products.

Cutting-edge millimeter wave packaging technology ROP®