Calterah Super Engines for Radar Chips Accelerate SOP of Automotive Sensing Systems

As vehicles become smarter, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and emerging short-range radar applications—such as in-cabin Child Presence Detection (CPD) and door radar—require enhanced radar signal processing capabilities: faster computation, higher energy efficiency, and greater algorithm flexibility.

To empower clients in developing high-performance radar products, Calterah has integrated a highly flexible, high-performance Radar Signal Processor (RSP) into its universal short-range radar (USRR) SoCs from 77 GHz Kunlun-USRR and 60 GHz Lancang-USRR families. The RSP comprises hardware acceleration engines for signal processing, a Sequencer, and a Processing Buffer (PBUF) and a Memory module for memory allocation and management. Based on this architecture, Calterah groups hardware engines at the software layer to create Super Engines— a suite of algorithm modules for universal radar signal processing. This “algorithm recipe” enables users to directly harness the underlying chip hardware and greatly simplify algorithm development for more efficient implementation and optimization of radar signal processing flows.

Calterah Super Engines Covering Full Radar Signal Processing Flow

Calterah’s Super Engines cover the whole radar signal processing flow and practical automotive radar applications, offering common algorithm functions such as:

Fast-Time processing: Handles raw radar signals captured at each instant to resolve the target range.
Slow-Time processing: Analyzes chirp signals within a period of time to resolve the target velocity.
Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) detection: Detects true targets amid clutter while suppressing the noise to ensure a constant false alarm rate.
One-Dimensional Digital Beamforming (1D-DBF): Combines signals from antenna arrays to estimate target azimuth or elevation.
Two-Dimensional DBF (2D-DBF): Leverages 2D antenna array signals to accurately measure both azimuth and elevation.

The suite also includes Super Engines for emerging radar applications (e.g., in-cabin radar):

Fast-Time Combination: Enhances short-range detection robustness by combination along the fast-time dimension.
Slow-Time Combination: Improves velocity resolution by combination along the slow-time dimension.
Low Power Mode: Ensures stable detection for radar applications requiring long standby.

Calterah Super Engines Empowering Development of High-Performance Radar

Calterah Super Engines provide strong support for radar development:

Richer Functions

To achieve diverse real-world applications, Calterah Super Engines integrate a comprehensive range of flexible algorithms, including:

Data clipping of fast Fourier transform (FFT) results, enabling high-resolution detection in short-range radar scenarios while shortening subsequent computation time.
With multi-dimensional combinations, CFAR provides 5 combination modes, enhancing radar signal gains and target detection accuracy. Users can flexibly select modes based on performance and algorithm requirements of target applications.
DBF supports up to 512 steering vectors, enabling superior angular detection accuracy and parallel processing to optimize algorithm runtime.

More Efficient Development

Users can directly call the Super Engines to rapidly build signal processing flows, or to customize and extend each block for specific applications, which facilitates implementation of algorithms such as FFT, CFAR, multi-path processing, and complex angular handling.
With extensive system-level validation, Calterah Super Engines ensure bit-true numerical consistency between software simulation and actual results generated by chips. This capability can significantly reduce algorithm development time, speeding up the transition from simulation to mass production.

Shortened Runtime

Each Super Engine is meticulously engineered, achieving time-optimal RSP-based architectures to minimize signal processing latency, empowering radar systems with faster responses and enhanced detection sensitivity.

From the Baseband Accelerator (BBA) of the Alps SoC platform, to the RSP and Super Engines on the Kunlun SoC platform, Calterah has consistently stayed close to the demands of automotive radar applications, and innovates radar chips and technologies to help customers accelerate the SOP of high-performance automotive radar products.