At its OktoberTech 2017 Technology Forum Infineon Technologies will demonstrate the latest semiconductor solutions underlying autonomous driving, including new radar sensors. The company recently made available to early adopters a complete radar chipset solution. It includes a 77/79 GHz Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC), a high-performance multicore microcontroller with a dedicated sensor processing unit and a safety power supply to accelerate the development of advanced radar systems.
“Over the recent years, we have seen the pace of innovation in the automotive industry accelerate to a level we have not experienced previously. Companies in Silicon Valley have taken a strong interest in taking a leading position for automotive innovation,” said Ritesh Tyagi, head of the Silicon Valley Automotive Innovation Centre (SVIC) at Infineon Technologies. “Infineon has more than a decade of radar experience and is a preferred chip partner of the automotive industry. Our SVIC team connects the development forces of established and disruptive companies with latest technologies of Infineon, thus accelerating the advancement of the fully automated car.”
Complete radar chipset
The Infineon concept of a monolithic highly-integrated radio frequency (RF) radar transceiver was well-received with major design-wins at industry-leading system suppliers to the automotive industry. The new RF radar single-chip transceiver replaces three previous components: the RF transmitter, the RF receiver and a companion Phase Locked Loop (PLL) device. The RF radar transceiver together with a second generation AURIX radar-specific microcontroller and a fail-safe power supply is the basis for a scalable radar chipset.
All three products are fully compliant with ISO26262 specifications. To support new designs at established automotive system suppliers and disruptive companies, Infineon will make a radar module starter kit available in Q1/2018. The radar module starter kit will include the three ICs (RF radar transceiver, AURIX radar-specific microcontroller and fail-safe power supply) and an integrated software package to take advantage of the dedicated signal processing hardware accelerator in the chipset. It is intended as an evaluation starter kit for developing radar sensors using the Infineon chipset.
Road safety
At present Infineon is the leading supplier of 77/79 GHz radar chips. With a total of over 50 million radar sensor chips sold, Infineon is the standard in radar-based driver assistance systems in all car segments including premium, mid-range and compact cars. With this new radar chipset Infineon is set to further raise its market position over the next years. The growth of radar applications in vehicles is further fueled by the voluntary commitment of the United States automotive industry and a mandatory requirement by Euro NCAP for the use of radar-based driver assistance systems to achieve a five stars safety rating in a new car.
Infineon will equip the three key sensor technologies for semi-automated and fully automated cars: radar, camera (with 3D image sensor chips based on the time-of-Flight (ToF) principle), and lidar. Infineon has also developed other sensing technologies for automotive safety sensor applications: Hall, magnetic and pressure sensor chips for airbags and tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) as well as gear sticks and steering column controls, for example.
