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Calterah Cascading Imaging Radar Solution Enhances VRU Detection and Boosts Vehicle Active Safety

2024-07-19

On July 18, the 2024 Global Electronics Technology Innovation Conference for New Energy and Intelligent Vehicles was held in Shenzhen by the China Sensor and IoT Industry Alliance. A series of sub-forums were organized on themes such as intelligent driving, intelligent cockpit, semiconductor innovation technology, and power batteries. Calterah radar algorithm expert Chen Yi was invited to attend the Lidar and mmWave Radar Sub-forum, where he delivered a speech titled "Cascading Imaging Radar Solution and Vulnerable Road User Detection" to elaborate on Calterah’s latest two-chip cascading imaging radar solution powered by Andes SoCs and its application in detecting vulnerable road users.

Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs) typically refer to pedestrians, cyclists, and other relatively vulnerable groups in road traffic. Globally, as automotive safety standards continue to improve, protocols including E-NCAP and C-NCAP have set higher requirements for VRU protection capabilities of vehicles. Thus mmWave radar is facing greater performance challenges, as it needs to achieve more accurate and reliable sensing.

Officially released at Calterah Day 2024, Calterah two-chip cascading imaging radar solution has redefined the development paradigm of mmWave imaging radar, enabled by Andes SoCs that are powerful, flexible, and very cost-competitive, helping to enhance vehicle active safety. Calterah Andes SoC chip boasts a unique architecture of a quad-core CPU with a digital signal processor (DSP) and a Radar Signal Processor (RSP) and supports the patented Flex-Cascading® technology that enables the cascading of two Andes SoCs to achieve an imaging radar system. Calterah cascading imaging radar solution supports efficient and rapid full radar signal processing flow, with a 320 m maximum detection range and excellent range resolution and angular resolution capabilities.

 

Calterah Imaging Radar Technologies Enhance VRU Detection

During his speech, Chen noted, "In classic VRU scenarios, the challenges faced by mmWave radar include detection of small targets and low-velocity targets, angular resolution issues, and the distinction between strong and weak targets. To address these issues, Calterah cascading imaging radar solution based on Andes SoCs applies several leading-edge technologies that have greatly increased the detection accuracy of VRUs."

  • Thanks to the 22 nm CMOS process technology, the Andes SoC chip has excellent RF performance, meeting the needs of small target detection.
  • With the DDM technology and the coherent CFAR algorithm, the solution achieves higher processing gain to satisfy the requirements of small target detection.
  • Utilizing the Multi-Band Chirp (MBC) technology, the solution offers higher range resolution and velocity resolution to facilitate the detection of low-velocity targets.
  • Harnessing the Spatially Variant Apodization (SVA) technology for dynamic windowing, the solution reduces the impact of strong targets obscuring weak targets.
  • By applying high-performance angular super-resolution algorithms with low latency, the pain point of insufficient radar angular resolution is resolved.
  • By using micro-Doppler and AI technologies, the solution has its VRU recognition capability enhanced.

Chen Yi also demonstrated field test results of Calterah cascading imaging radar solution in actual VRU scenarios on the spot, including separating multiple pedestrians, distinguishing a vehicle and a pedestrian, and detecting a pedestrian standing between two vehicles, as well as detection scenarios with pedestrians hidden by vehicles and at the crossroads. These results spoke volumes for the detection accuracy of pedestrians, vehicles, and other targets by Calterah cascading imaging radar solution in complex traffic environments, which can help intelligent vehicles achieve more stable VRU protection.

Calterah cascading imaging radar solution will help accelerate the commercialization of imaging radar and enhance safety performances of intelligent vehicles. In the future, Calterah will continue to empower the automotive industry with semiconductor innovations, aiding the rapid development of China's new energy and intelligent connected vehicle industry.