Recently, Dr. Chen Jiashu, CEO of Calterah, attended the China Auto Supply Chain Summit (CASCS) at the World New Auto Technology Collaboration Ecosystem Show (WNATCES 2023). He shared his insights on the future market trends for the automotive mmWave radar and explained how Calterah’s innovative semiconductor technologies propel the wide application of automotive mmWave radar.

The mmWave radar, as the only sensor supporting 24/7 operation, precise velocity measurement, and long-range detection beyond 300 meters,  without affecting the vehicle's appearance, has become an indispensable sensor for automotive active safety systems. Dr. Chen stated, “No matter whether autonomous driving will be widely deployed and how wide its deployment will be, active safety systems will become standard on future vehicles just like passive safety systems. We’ll see  mmWave radar sensors with round-the-clock operation employed on each and every car.” According to the prediction by Yole Group, in 5 years, mmWave radar will take the largest proportion in semiconductor device value among all automotive sensors. In the new auto era, the popularity of automotive mmWave radar is gradually increasing, and three major trends in for the automotive mmWave radar market have emerged: cost-effective radar, 4D imaging radar, and low-power and compact radar.

Calterah CMOS mmWave Radar SoC Technology Realizes Cost-Efficient Radar

 An important prerequisite for the wide application of active safety systems and ADAS is the lowered cost of automotive radar. The cost of both the materials and the development investment need to be reduced. Calterah, ahead of the industry, introduced the CMOS fully integrated mmWave radar SoC platform—Alps, reducing the material cost of mmWave radar by over 80% and significantly lowering the difficulty of development. With a carefully designed architecture, the Alps platform SoC chip achieves the best PPA (Performance, Power, Area) in the industry, considerably optimizing the radar cost. To reduce customers’ investment in radar development, Calterah also provides complete radar solutions to help customers shorten the time to market for their high-performance automotive radar products.

Calterah Next-Generation SoC with Flexible Architecture and Extraordinary Computing Power Empowers 4D Imaging Radar

4D imaging radar primarily serves autonomous driving systems of L3/L4 and above, providing true redundancy for sensors beyond visual and laser ones. The industry has been researching and developing 4D imaging radar openly, so radar chips need to have a flexible architecture to support different waveform designs, MIMO systems, and signal processing flows. At the same time, they need to provide greater computing power and more virtual channels to achieve higher angle resolution.

 To meet these demands, Calterah launched the Andes SoC based on the next-generation Andes platform at the end of 2022, the industry's first mmWave radar SoC chip based on 22nm CMOS technology. The Andes chip features a unique architecture with a multi-core CPU, a DSP and an RSP, offering unparalleled flexibility and computing power, and supporting Flex-Cascading. Customers can cascade any number of Andes SoCs to develop a powerful 4D radar system with more transmit and receive channels.

Calterah Antenna in Package (AiP) Technology Enables Compact and Low-Power Radar

In the new auto era, new ultra-short-range radar applications have emerged, such as automatic door collision avoidance, autonomous parking assistance  enabled by exterior radar, and child presence detection and driver vital sign detection and drowsiness prediction enabled by interior radar. These applications demand mmWave radar to be more compact and power-efficient. To fulfill these requirements, Calterah introduced the Antenna-in-Package (AiP) SoC chips, the world's first 77 GHz / 60 GHz radar AiP chips. Calterah's AiP technology integrates mmWave MIMO antenna arrays with the SoC in 3D, enabling extremely compact radar modules that can be installed easily. Meanwhile, the material and development costs of radar modules are drastically reduced, which allows customers to launch complete radar sensor products faster.

 Calterah's continuous innovation breakthroughs in mmWave radar SoC technology empower the realization of more cost-effective radar, 4D imaging radar, and compact and low-power radar, facilitating the wide application of automotive mmWave radar. As the only Chinese enterprise supplying auto-grade 77 GHz radar chips with mass production, Calterah has been invested in mmWave radar semiconductor technologies for nearly a decade. It has introduced a most comprehensive portfolio of mmWave radar chips in the industry, with cumulative IC shipments exceeding 6 million units, enabling traditional and emerging radar applications over 150 vehicle models, including front-looking radar, corner radar, in-cabin radar, automatic door collision avoidance radar, and tail gate radar. In the future, Calterah will continue to innovate its mmWave radar SoC technologies, to help achieve safe and intelligent mobility of more vehicles and “Make Millimeter-Wave Serve Everyone”.