At a recent IWPC interactive workshop hosted by Mercedes Benz—“Automotive Radar and ADAS Evolution for 2030 and Beyond” at Stuttgart from June 11 to 13, Calterah gave an elaborate talk on “An 8T8R Radar System Using SoC Cascading Technology”, which followed Calterah Day 2024 on June 6 where Calterah first unveiled its 2-chip cascading imaging radar solution based on the Andes SoCs. This talk echoed the workshop’s goals of examining state-of-the-art technology innovation, identifying potential future development paths for SoC providers, Radar-Tier 2 and Radar-Tier 1, and assessing optimum architectures for L1-5 vehicles.

Calterah redefines the R&D paradigm of imaging radar by rolling out the 2-chip cascading imaging radar solution based on the Andes SoCs, which relies on a proprietary core technology—Flex-Cascading^®. With just two Andes SoC chips connected via high-speed Chip-to-Chip interfaces, this solution offers an architecture far simpler than those of typical cascading radar solutions, which require connecting multiple transceiver chips via parallel MIPI channels to a separate processor. As highlighted by Calterah at the IWPC workshop, the patented Flex-Cascading^® technology enables the flexible cascading of any number of SoCs, bringing the key benefits of the scalability of computing and storage resources along with MIMO channels, the simplified hardware design, an optimized BOM, and the reusable software.

In Calterah 2-Chip Cascading Imaging Radar Solution, each SoC has 4 transmit and 4 receive channels, forming 64 MIMO channels in total, which has a 30% increase over the typical 48-channel solutions available on the market. With two Andes SoCs, each boasting a unique architecture of a quad-core CPU with a digital signal processor (DSP) and a dedicated Radar Signal Processor (RSP), this imaging radar system solution offers a computing power of over 5,000 DMIPS and 46 GMACs in total. On top of this processing muscle, the imaging radar solution supports full-flow signal processing with enhanced performances, supported by several key technologies, such as multi-band chirps, Doppler Division Multiplexing, and Multi-Mode DoA estimation.

As a result of all these advantages, the 2-chip solution achieves an impressive 320 m detection range with a ±30° FOV for a 10 dBsm target and outputs up to 2040 point targets per frame. Moreover, the angular separation of 1.5° in azimuth and 3° in elevation allows separating closely-spaced targets. Notably, as demonstrated by Calterah’s field test videos during the talk, weak targets like pedestrians behind parked cars can be reliably detected and vehicles visually blocked by other vehicles in front on a highway can also be clearly “seen” by the radar. The solution also excels in challenging scenarios like intersections with many weak and strong moving targets.

With its strong performances, scalable architecture, and optimized design, Calterah positioned this 2-chip cascading imaging radar solution powered by Andes SoCs as a flexible, high-performance, and affordable solution to accelerate implementation of imaging radar by customers.

As Calterah continues pushing the boundaries of radar technology, solutions like its 2-chip cascading imaging radar solution will play a pivotal role in enhancing the active safety for vehicles. Calterah looks forward to joining hands with industry experts to further advancements and evolution of automotive radar and ADAS.