The document provides an overview of automotive radar technology, highlighting its function in detecting and ranging objects using electromagnetic systems. It discusses the trends in automotive radar adoption, emphasizing safety features, advancements in sensor technology for autonomous vehicles, and the shift towards high-frequency bands for improved reliability. Key use cases include adaptive cruise control and collision avoidance systems, positioning radar as integral to advanced driver assistance systems.

1. Automotive RADAR Adoption
An Overview
Ram Mirwani
Director, Global Strategic Accounts
NI AWR Group
National Instruments

2. Topics
 Automotive RADAR
 Trends for Automotive RADAR

3. Overview of RADAR
• RADAR = radio detection and ranging
• Radar is an electromagnetic system for the detection and
range of objects
• Where the reflection of the transmitted waveform is used for
detection and range
• And its range (R) is determined by the equation
/2
out R c 
back R c 
2R out back R c    
2R R c 
Transmit Pulse
Receive Pulse

4. Automotive RADAR
• FMCW (Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave)
 Frequency of Tx signal is modulated in a linear fashion
 Frequency difference (Δf) of reflected signal based on range
 Long, Mid, and Short Range RADAR (LRR, MRR, SRR)
Image from www.Altera.com

5. Automotive RADAR Use Cases
 Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)
 Blind Spot Detection (BSD)
 Collision Mitigation (CM)
 Lane Change Assist (LCA)
Advanced Driver
Assistance Systems
(ADAS)

6. Trends in Automotive RADAR
• Focus on Safety
 360 degrees vehicle surveillance
 Object identification/distinction
 Rear-end Crash Avoidance
 CAR2X (Car 2 Car and Car 2 Infrastructure Communication)
Image from http://www.wykop.pl/link/2349196//

7. Trends in Automotive RADAR
• Adoption of 77- 81GHz
 More reliable and more accurate
 Greater capability to distinguish objects with high bandwidth
 Smaller footprint (multi mode, multi range)
Image from safecarnews.com

8. Trends in Automotive RADAR
• Autonomous Drive Vehicles
 From “Assisted” to “Autonomous”
 Sensor Validation and Cross-Check
 Sensor Control Unit – RADAR, CAMERA, LIDAR, Ultrasonic
 Object identification and Action – Software driven architecture
Image from http://articles.sae.org/10794/

9. Trends in Automotive RADAR
“Essentially, this front end processing processes the –
possibly multiple – incoming FMCW analog channels to
a single digital stream of azimuth/range/velocity tuples.
This data flows into more CPU cores where software,
possibly supported by additional accelerators, attempts,
to infer the presence, location, and nature surrounding
the vehicle.”
- Ralf Reuter
RADAR Systems Engineer at Freescale Semiconductor
From “Cutting Through the Fog- The road ahead for vehicular radar”,
Ron Wilson, Altera Corporation, 2012

10. Low-Cost Modular Measurement
and Control Hardware
Productive Software
Development Tools
Highly Integrated
Systems Platforms
Graphical system design combines graphical
programming software with modular hardware,
leveraging the latest technologies
National Instruments in Automotive RADAR

11. Enable Concurrent Design and Test Flow
Link Research to Deployment for Automotive RADAR
DESIGN
VALIDATE
TEST

12. Summary
Image from http://www.sensethecar.com/35877/