The Overview
Renesas Electronics enters the automotive radar market with its new RAA270205 high-definition radar transceiver, a 4x4-channel, 76- to 81-GHz transceiver. The device joins the company’s growing sensor-fusion portfolio, which combines radar, vision systems, and other sensing modalities.
Who Needs It & Why?
The new transceiver MMIC is especially suited for imaging radar, long-range forward-looking radar, and 4D radar. However, it also can be used for corner and central-processing radar architectures, the so-called “satellite” automotive radar systems. In such use cases, the device meets the demanding requirements of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and Level 3 and higher autonomous-driving applications.
Under the Hood
Designed in cooperation with Steradian Semiconductors, which Renesas acquired earlier this year, the RAA270205 is equipped with four transmit and four receive channels, supporting up to 16 multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) channels. It can be cascaded to enable higher channel counts and better radar resolution.
The RAA270205 features best-in-class accuracy with up to 5 GHz of bandwidth, and a 112.5-Msample/s analog-to-digital converter (ADC) sampling rate that's said to be nearly 3X faster than competing devices. Power consumption of 1.2 W is 50% lower than comparable transceivers and it delivers a noise figure of 9 dB, which is 3 dB less than other radar transceivers. Its superior chirp rate of up to 300 MHz/µs improves radar resolution and object detection.
Renesas has plans to combine the RAA270205 transceiver with other compatible devices from its portfolio to support automotive radar systems. These so-called “winning combinations” comprise technically vetted system architectures from mutually compatible devices that work together seamlessly to bring an optimized, low-risk design for faster time-to-market.
The RAA270205 will be available in 1Q/2023 in sample quantities, with commercial production planned for 2024. The transceiver is available in a small, easy-to-integrate embedded wafer-level ball-grid array (eWLB) package, measuring only 7.6 × 5.6 mm. It will be fully compliant with automotive industry requirements such as IATF 16949, AEC-Q100 Grade 2, and ASIL B.