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Calterah Brings mmWave Radar SoC Lancang-USRR to InCabin Europe 2024, Poised to Serve Global Market of In-Cabin Sensing

2024-10-14

Recently, the InCabin Europe 2024 event held in Barcelona brought together experts from leading automotive OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, and chip companies worldwide to discuss the latest innovations in in-cabin technologies for safety, comfort, and convenience. Calterah’s Product Owner of the Kunlun platform, Ran Xudong, attended the event and delivered a keynote speech about Calterah's latest in-cabin sensing solution—the Lancang-USRR mmWave radar SoC.

As global regulations put higher requirements on in-cabin sensing capabilities of new vehicles and the adoption of in-cabin radar systems by cars continues rising, emerging radar including in-cabin radar, has become one of the three major segments of automotive mmWave radar, alongside imaging radar and ADAS radar. Unlike the other two markets, the emerging short-range radar sector faces several challenges, including low power consumption, compact size, high angular resolution, and the need to support diverse application scenarios.

"Currently, there haven’t been any radar SoC specifically designed for accurate short-range detection scenarios on the mmWave radar market, particularly for in-cabin applications," said Ran Xudong. "Addressing the challenges faced by in-cabin radar, Calterah launched the Lancang-USRR SoC, based on the new Kunlun platform, at Calterah Day 2024. This is the world's first 60 GHz mmWave Radar SoC with 6 transmitters and 6 receivers, offering enhanced angular detection capabilities, supporting a wide range of applications, and delivering low power consumption and compact size. It’s a perfect go-to solution that meets the differentiated demands of the emerging in-cabin radar market." The term "USRR" in Lancang-USRR stands for "Universal Short Range Radar," indicating that this multi-channel radar SoC is specially optimized and tailored for a variety of emerging radar applications.

 

Calterah Lancang-USRR mmWave Radar SoC 

  • The Lancang-USRR SoC features outstanding RF front-end performance, with 6 transmitters and 6 receivers (6T6R) which enable 36 channels that provide more accurate and stable angular detection. This capability allows the system to handle more complex scenarios and helps to simplify compact module design.
  • The Lancang-USRR SoC integrates a powerful and flexible Radar Signal Processor (RSP), supporting over 10 Sequencer instructions and two parallel instruction queues. This means the SoC can easily meet the requirements of various applications, such as Child Presence Detection (CPD) and Seatbelt Reminder (SBR).
  • Adhering to Calterah's design philosophy of low-power consumption, the Lancang-USRR SoC offers a deep sleep mode with power consumption as low as around 1 mW and supports fast wake-up from sleep within 5 ms.
  • Using Calterah's innovative Antenna-in-Package (AiP) technology, the Lancang-USRR SoC greatly simplifies antenna design. Compared to radar modules using standard 6T6R chips, a radar system based on the 6T6R AiP SoC has a 20% smaller size, making it easier to install such an ultra-compact radar module in confined spaces such as the B-pillar or the roof above the rear seats of a vehicle.

During his presentation, Ran Xudong demonstrated a demo video that simulated a radar system using the Lancang-USRR 6T6R SoC, showcasing its performance in in-cabin detection scenarios. The system could consistently and accurately detect a baby model in corner areas of the cabin, as well as identify people outside the vehicle. Even in challenging interference scenarios, such as movements of a half-full water bottle in an empty car, the Lancang-USRR SoC could still minimize false alarms, thanks to its exceptional robustness against interferences. Simulation results also indicated that compared to radar models with fewer channels, the point cloud output of the 6T6R radar system showed a significant improvement, with detection accuracy increasing by several orders of magnitude, highlighting the superior detection performance of the Lancang-USRR 6T6R SoC.

Point Cloud Comparison of In-Cabin Detection by Radar Systems with Different Numbers of Channels

By introducing the Lancang-USRR SoC at InCabin Europe to the world, Calterah aims to meet the demands of the emerging automotive radar market with technological innovations, breakthroughs, and more competitive chip products, drive the development of smart cabin technologies worldwide, and "Make Millimeter-Wave Serve Everyone".