Advanced automotive radar increases passenger safety

22nd July 2015

Nat Bowers

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Freescale Semiconductor and Continental have announced plans to integrate Freescale’s 77GHz radar technology into Continental’s next-gen short- and mid-range automotive radar modules. This represents the next step in the evolution of Continental’s comprehensive ADAS radar solutions, helping automakers meet safety mandates and extend ADAS safety benefits to more vehicles.

Defined and developed from the ground up to address the ISO 26262 standard, Freescale’s next radar chipset integrates a complete radar system, providing coverage around the vehicle for applications such as emergency braking, blind spot detection, lane keeping assistance and pedestrian detection. The system delivers scalability for processing power, channel count, field of view and safety, enabling multiple radar modules to provide coverage for surround sensing around the vehicle. A significant reduction in the number of chips enables a smaller form factor and less obtrusive integration into the vehicle, while maintaining lower power consumption and high RF performance.

These advanced capabilities will build on Continental’s current-gen ARS 400 long range radar sensor. The ARS 400 radar solution incorporates Freescale’s MR2001 77GHz multichannel radar transceiver and MPC577xK MCU with integrated radar signal ADCs and a dedicated radar DSP. The ARS 400 encompasses the entire signal path from 77GHz antenna input to the car’s network connection, enabling a reliable, feature rich, small form factor radar solution.

“The ADAS market is growing rapidly and there is demand for a next-gen radar platform with integrated functional safety compliant with the ISO 26262 standard,” said Dr. Thomas Brohm, Vice President Engineering, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Business Unit, Continental. “Our continued work with Freescale will enable automotive OEMs to meet increasingly stringent safety protocols, such as those under the European New Car Assessment Program (NCAP).”

Freescale has developed and shipped more than one million radar integrated circuits into the market. The company’s next-gen 77GHz radar solutions build on its existing S32R radar MCU and MR2001 scalable radar transceiver chipset, which are already shipping.

“To advance the truly ‘assisted’ driver, the role of radar and other technologies is expanding to provide coverage around the entire vehicle,” said Jürgen Weyer, Vice President, Automotive Sales & Marketing – EMEA, Freescale. “We are very pleased to continue our strong relationship with Continental to make our roads safer by facilitating broader adoption of radar in more mainstream vehicles.”