In order to increase the situational awareness of the real world in highly automated vehicles, many carmakers are beginning to accept the need to deploy various types of sensors around each chassis, but they do not take into account these senses For example, what is the performance of today's vision, LiDar and radar sensors? What are the requirements for automotive sensors?
Metawave is a new start-up company independent of the Xerox PARC Research Center earlier this year, but is confident that it will change the 'traditional radar limits' that the automotive industry has identified. "At present, car radars see' less than distant objects, Identify what you see, and the processing speed is not enough to operate when the expressway is running.
In short, the camera or light can see the object, today's car radar is not necessarily able to see it the only merit is that it can operate in all-weather situation.
Metawave was established in January and is now commercializing its metro radar and antenna with proprietary licenses from PARC, and is currently promoting its 'full radar package' technology. Metawave plans to show at the International Consumer Electronics Show in January 2018 (CES) to show this prototype.
The metamaterial is a small software-controlled engineering structure that is deployed on a printed circuit board (PCE), which claims to be able to direct electromagnetic beams in a manner that was previously limited to military systems (more powerful and expensive).
However, Metawave did not blame the radar chip for today's automotive sensors - primarily by vendors such as NXP, Infineon, or Texas Instruments. In fact, Metawave's full radar package is not limited by specific radar wafers, and on the contrary, the newcomer believes that the problem lies in beamforming in radar sensors (including antennas), resulting in resolution and speed issues The
Regression simulation
Matawave CEO Maha Achour believes that it is time for the industry to let the radar platform return to the simulation. "She stressed that 'we still exist in the simulated world, the car is also the case.Therefore, Metawave plans to build a affordable high-performance analog radar Platform, and not to face the complexity and cost of military-grade operations.
Achour claims that Metawave uses a single antenna to design new analog radars that can guide and form beams in a horizontal and vertical direction and adjust the beam from a wider field of view to a very narrow cone angle - as low as 1. Achour says: We can achieve very fast speed - microsecond speed scan.
But how does Metawave's analog radar compare to digital radars that are now widely used in vehicles?
Radar based on digital beamforming (DBF) technology requires an array of antennas to focus the transmitter's electromagnetic signals in a particular direction and turn it to other directions. The receiver then retrieves the return signal from the object and digitally To process, and ultimately the formation of the scene image.
In order to achieve this process, Achour explained that the digital radar must inject a different phase delay for each antenna so that the beams converge in the same direction and extend in the other directions.
DBF's flaw is the phase delay. The operation requires complex and lengthy digital signal processing. Achour points out: 'This intensive signal processing results in very slow reaction rates (millisecond delay at steering beam) and poor' collective 'radiation Mode, because the beam is turned away from the antenna line (zero angle).
Thus, she said, "These traditional radars are not able to observe at a long distance as they control the main lobes and sidelobes."
Make a decision on a distant object
Drue Freeman, a consultant and investor who is currently working with Metawave, said that one of the biggest problems that architects must address in relation to autopilot vehicles is the ability to make decisions about objects that are far from the vehicle. 'Otherwise, the maximum speed of the automated vehicle Will be limited, Freeman points out.
Freeman said: 'Today's radar solution, even with the best digital beamforming technology, may be able to reliably see the distance of 200 meters ahead of the car, but also to detect "things" there, but they did not Law to identify what that is.
The reality is that DBF is not supporting high resolution is the high noise ratio (SNR), not both.
Super material
Metawave claims that its goal is to provide a high-performance radar similar to that used to track missiles, but not to produce the cost, complexity and power required for military applications. Achour says Metawave's analog radar 'simulates the phase array' Like a military antenna, but the start-up can do this without the need for a phase shifter that relies on military applications because it uses its own metamaterials.
Freeman admits: 'Metawave is excited by its metamaterial-based analog beamforming technology, which allows them to precisely control radar beams, achieve faster operating speeds and better SNRs without sacrificing resolution.'
(To be continued ...)
Compiler: Susan Hong