See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/283231991

Driving towards 2020: Automotive radar technology trends

Article · June 2015

DOI: 10.1109/ICMIM.2015.7117956

CITATIONS READS
23 1,953

1 author:

Juergen Hasch
Robert Bosch GmbH
64 PUBLICATIONS   961 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Radar Sensor View project

Polarimetric MIMO Radar for Automotive Applications View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Juergen Hasch on 29 March 2017.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Driving Towards 2020: Automotive Radar
Technology Trends
Jürgen Hasch
Robert Bosch GmbH, Corporate Sector Research and Advance Engineering, P.O. Box 10 60 50, D-70049 Stuttgart, Germany
Email: juergen.hasch@de.bosch.com

Abstract—In the last few years automotive radar has been Most of the listed functions will make use of a radar sensor
transformed from being a niche sensor to becoming standard even due to it’s robustness in varying environmental conditions like
in middle-class cars. With Euro-NCAP ratings now requiring rain, dust, or sunlight at a minimum of costs.
automated braking and pedestrian safety functionality, radar
is often identified as the best suited sensor for this purpose.
Driver Monitoring
Additionally, future automated driving will require detailed and

one
Turn and Crossing Injury
j y free
highly reliable information on the environment and surrounding Cross Traffic Assist

Safetty for everyo

Assist
Left Turn Assist driving
street traffic. This requires radar sensors to provide more detailed Pedestrian
Protection
Active Pedestrian Protection Accident free
driving
information about the environment, foremost in the spatial Predictive Emer-
Emer
Extended AEB low speed
Backk Over Avoidance
d
gency Braking
domain. Automotive radar has always benefited significantly from Lane Keeping Support Narrow Lane /
Construction Zone Assist
technological advances, especially in semiconductor technology Lane Assist Lane Change Assist Auto-
nomous
and packaging, allowing a better performance and much more Assistance Evasion Assist Evasive Steering Support
driving
autonomy
Longitudinal guidance
functionality in the radar frontend. A second key area is the Travel Assist
ACC (stop&go) Integrated Cruise Assist

antenna system, where new concepts to acquire more information Traffic Jam Assist
Comfort & A

Degree of a

Park and
about signals reflected from the environment can significantly Maneuver Assist Lateral guidance
Remote Park Assist
Light and Sight Maneuver
improve resolution and detection performance. Assist Brake Assist Automatic Park Assist

2014 2016 2021+

I. I NTRODUCTION
The market for automotive radar sensors is expected to dras- Fig. 1. Roadmap for driver assistance functions
tically increase over the next years. For example, compared
to the aggregated number of all sensors since the year 2000, II. R EQUIREMENTS
the aggregated number of installed 77 GHz radar sensors from
No single universal radar sensor can fulfill all of the
Bosch has doubled in 2014. It is expected that the installed
requirements of the individual functions listed in the roadmap
base will increase tenfold by 2016.
of the previous section simultaneously. However, it is possible
The three main drivers for this strong increase are com-
to identify a list of key aspects, where today’s radar sensors
fort driver assistance functions, vehicle safety and automated
need to be improved to address future requirements:
driving functions:
• Higher angular resolution in two dimensions to be able to
• Automakers are using the growing number of assistance
provide much more detailed information about detected
functions like adaptive cruise control (ACC), lane change
objects. This is especially important to determine object
assist (LCA), or left turn assist (LTA) as a way of standing
properties like height, size, or type.
out from the competition.
• Improved velocity resolution to reliably detect vulnerable
• Euro NCAP’s rating process for new cars requires to
road users like pedestrians or cyclists.
feature at least one assistance system in order to receive
• A flexible field of view (FoV) to allow a broad FoV for
a five-star rating, and from 2016 on, comprehensive
pedestrian detection, as well as a narrow FoV for highway
pedestrian safety will be mandatory.
driving.
• First automated driving functions, where the car is taking
• Reliable detection of all relevant objects, and assertion
over more tasks from the driver, are expected to be avail-
of failure, due to component defects or environmental
able soon. Starting with a limited scope of automation
influence like heavy rainfall.
like the highway pilot, where the vehicle drives and
• Adhere to cost and size restrictions while still addressing
navigates on highways, or automated parking, where the
the required performance improvements.
vehicle is navigating in a parking lot or garage without
driver supervision. The final goal however, is to remove III. T ECHNOLOGY T RENDS
the driver completely from the loop and to enable the car A selection of technology trends addressing the identified
to handle all driving situations on it’s own. requirements is presented in this section. The focus in this pa-
An overview of some of the driver-assistance functions that per is centered on high-frequency topics. Object classification,
are expected to appear in the next years is shown in Fig.1. data fusion, or higher level functionality is not considered.
A. Semiconductor Technology
Long gone are the times when realizing a millimeter-wave
frontend was an obscure art, only a select few groups were
capable of realizing and the components used were precious
like diamonds. Nowadays, almost any high-speed semiconduc-
tor technology effortlessly achieves transistor speeds beyond
100 GHz. Higher transistor speed typically translates to lower
power, lower noise and a better design margin.
Fig.2 shows a comparison of the measured transistor per-
formance for modern silicon semiconductor technologies that
are being used for millimeter-wave design. The data for
SiGe bipolar devices was collected from [1]–[7]. The data on
measured CMOS transistor performance was extracted from
[8].
It can be seen, that the transistor performance of SiGe
bipolar devices can still outperform CMOS transistors, even
down to 28 nm. Also, SiGe devices can have a very high
performance even with large feature sizes, because of the
vertical nature of the transistor.
The key advantage of modern CMOS nodes with double-
digit nm feature sizes is the high integration density of digital
circuitry, enabling massive system-on-chip (SoC) integration,
digital-assisted RF, and replacing analog functions by fully
digital counterparts, as shown e.g. in [9].
Main technical obstacles for using CMOS technology in
millimeter-wave automotive radar are the achievable output
power, receiver noise, and linearity over the whole temperature
range up to 125◦ C. Furthermore reliability, lifetime, and ro-
bustness still need to be proven in an automotive environment
[10] and [11].
Fig. 2. Measured speed of CMOS and SiGe transistors
B. Packaging
Modern automotive radar sensors like the Bosch MRR [12]
are manufactured using surface-mount technology, even for the
77 GHz millimeter-wave parts. This is a key enabler to achieve
low-cost and high-volume production.
In addition to the millimeter-wave capable package, the
printed circuit board (PCB) is another key element, serving
multiple purposes. It is used as antenna substrate, means for
RF, DC, power and digital signal distribution, mechanical
carrier of electronic components, and for thermal management.
Fig.3 shows the PCB of the MRR with antenna and frontend
integrated circuits on the top side, and baseband with digital
electronics on the bottom side.
(a) Front (b) Back
Fig. 3. RF PCB of the Bosch MRR [12]
With increasing performance requirements, fulfilling all
these demands gets more difficult and expensive, so new
solutions for PCB and package are required. One approach
is the introduction of new substrate materials based on liquid-
crystal polymer (LCP) or expoy resin, that enable multilayer-
structures, and improved manufacturing compared to the cur-
rent Teflon-based substrates, and are also more cost efficient
[13].
Another venue is the separation of the millimeter-wave
signals from low-frequency signals to allow new solutions
for distributing and radiating the millimeter-wave RF signals.
Antenna elements integrated on-chip and in-package have been
evaluated for this purpose before, an new approach is the
coupling of the RF signal directly from the package using
a package to waveguide transition [14].
(a) Drawing (b) Picture
Fig. 4. eWLB package to waveguide transition [14]
C. Antenna Element
The antenna element has always been a determining fac-
tor in radar performance. As the available bandwidth has
increased from 1 GHz in the 76-77 GHz band to 4 GHz in the
newly available 77-81 GHz band, the antenna element needs to
provide this increased bandwidth. In order to simultaneously
achieve a good input match, a well defined robust antenna
pattern with low sidelobes, without requiring a new complex
and costly technology, new antenna concepts are required like
[15].
Also, as more information about the environment like road
surface or remote object properties are desired, polarization
information is desired. This requires antenna types that can
operate simultaneously with multiple polarizations, while still
providing the desired radiation pattern.
D. Angle Information
A key requirement for next generation radar sensors is to
provide high angular resolution in azimuth and elevation. In
commercial or military radar systems, mechanical or electrical
scanning of narrow antenna beams has been the standard
approach to achieve high angular resolution. Mechanical scan-
ning is not feasible for automotive radar, as it is expensive to
achieve reliable mechanical scanning. Frequency-domain scan-
ning reduces the available bandwidth to achieve the required
distance resolution at a certain angle. Using phased arrays,
recently demonstrated in [16], allows creating an electronically
scanned narrow antenna beam pattern with excellent perfor-
mance. The disadvantage of this approach is that it requires
many individually steerable transmit and receive channels to
achieve a well behaved narrow beam.
With the advent of low-cost digital signal processing, an-
other approach has proven to by extremely successful: digital
beamforming (DBF) at the receive side. Here, the antenna
beamforming is conducted not at RF, but in the digital domain.
This approach also allows high-resolution algorithms to be
used for angle estimation. In addition, nonuniform and sparse
antenna arrays can be used, reducing the number of required
antenna elements and receive channels. An example of this
approach is the MRR sensor [12] using four receive channels
to achieve a high angle separability in azimuth.
This approach can be extended to systems with high angular
resolution in two dimensions, using sparse arrays to minimize
the number of receive channels [17]. This is shown in Fig.5.
Rx-Antenne RX Antenna
Tx-Antenne
TX Antenna
N = 16
HF-Mischer ...
aktivesPower Splitter
Leistungsteilernetzwerk
TP-Filter
AD-Wandler
76.77 GHz
. . 77
FMCW-Quelle
GHz
Signal Source
DSV,
(a) Block Diagram
Fig. 5. 2D Digital beamforming using sparse array [17]
Another approach to increase the angular resolution is to
facilitate a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system
concept, that creates an antenna array with additional virtual
antenna positions. There is a lot of ongoing research conducted
in this area, the example shown in Fig.6 was taken from
[18]. A critical issue with this approach is measurement
time. As traffic scenarios can he highly dynamic, sequential
measurement can lead to significant errors. Simultaneous mea-
surements using multiple carriers or signal coding are potential
solutions to this issue.
(a) PCB (b) Antenna Pattern
Fig. 6. MIMO System [18]
Finally, extending the MIMO approach with a transmit-
side phased array promises to maintain the advantages of
the MIMO approach while improving the overall SNR by
facilitating transmit-side antenna gains, as discussed in [19].
E. Modulation
Traditional modulation schemes like FSK, FMCW or Pulse-
CW – invented in the beginnings of radar technology in the last
century – need to be improved or replaced to achieve better
range-doppler separation, and to allow multiple transmitters
to transmit at the same time to reduce measurement time in
MIMO operation without interfering with each other.
Next to some hybrid forms or combinations like combining
FSK and FMCW [20], two modulation types have emerged in
recent times:
• Fast chirp sequences [21], with a single chirp duration in
the order of 50 µs or less, allow the separation of distance
and velocity information. This requires faster ADCs and
more signal processing power in the subsequent stages,
compared to slower FMCW modulation schemes.
• High speed coded signals are nowadays easily generated
digitally using integrated circuits, and also promise the
separation of speed and distance information, while at
the same time allowing code-domain signal separation
to enable simultaneous MIMO operation using multiple
transmitters [22].
Moving away completely from fixed modulation forms,
y
x an OFDM type radar systems has been brought [23] into
discussion. This approach allows software defined modulation,
LPF
ADC
well known from digital communication. However, in addition
DSPPC
to high-speed analog-to-digital conversion demands, this leads
(b) Ambiguity Function
to new requirements in the millimeter-wave frontend, as it has
to be very linear and with very low intermodulation. This is a
major challenge at millimeter-wave frequencies with required
bandwidths of up to 4 GHz.
F. Cooperation and Communication
Currently, each individual radar sensor is operating com-
pletely autonomous, without any communication from or
to other sensors. Cooperative operation of multiple sensors
promises a better detection of objects, e.g. when strong mir-
roring reflections occur, as well as achieving a larger field-of-
view [24].
As a further step, dedicated short range communication
(DSRC) from/to other vehicles will allow establishing a

Fig. 7. Generic OFDM radar system block diagram [23]
dynamic sensor network, that can provide data from many
vehicles and thereby achieve much more information at an
earlier time about the surrounding environment[25].
IV. C ONCLUSION
Radar sensors will remain to be a key component in
driver assistance systems in the future. Increasingly demanding
functions require substantial improvements in sensor perfor-
mance. Key technology trends are the facilitation of state-
of-the-art semiconductor technology to allow more complex
functionality, new modulation schemes enabled by complex
digital circuits, and novel concepts for angle information
determination.
In addition, extending environment information gathering
from single sensors to sensor groups, and finally to distributed
networks will become a key enabler for future automated
driving.
R EFERENCES
[1] J. J. Pekarik et al., “A 90nm SiGe BiCMOS technology for mm-wave
and high-performance analog applications,” in IEEE Bipolar/BiCMOS
Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM), Sept 2014, pp. 92–95.
[2] V. Jain et al., “Device and circuit performance of SiGe HBTs in
130nm BiCMOS process with fT/fMAX of 250/330 GHz,” in IEEE
Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM), Sept 2014,
pp. 96–99.
[3] H. Rucker et al., “A 0.13um SiGe BiCMOS Technology Featuring fT
/fmax of 240/330 GHz and Gate Delays Below 3 ps,” IEEE J. Solid-State
Circuits, vol. 45, no. 9, pp. 1678–1686, Sept 2010.
[4] F. Dielacher, M. Tiebout, P. Singerl, and D. Seebacher, “Silicon tech-
nologies and circuits for RF and mm-wave applications,” in IEEE
International Symposium on Radio-Frequency Integration Technology
(RFIT), Aug 2014, pp. 1–5.
[5] G. Avenier et al., “0.13 SiGe BiCMOS Technology Fully Dedicated to
mm-Wave Applications,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 44, no. 9,
pp. 2312–2321, Sep. 2009.
[6] P. Chevalier, “A 55 nm Triple Gate Oxide 9 Metal Layers SiGe BiCMOS
Technology Featuring 320 GHz f T / 370 GHz f MAX HBT and High-Q
Millimeter-Wave Passives,” in International Electron Devices Meeting,
2015.
[7] P. Hurwitz, S. Chaudhry, E. Preisler, R. Kanawati, and M. Racanelli,
“Foundry technology for RF and high performance analog applications,”
in VLSI Technology, Systems and Application (VLSI-TSA), Proceedings
of Technical Program - 2014 International Symposium on, April 2014,
pp. 1–4.
View publication stats
[8] S. Shopov and S. P. Voinigescu, “Characterization of the High Frequency
Performance of 28-nm UTBB FDSOI MOSFETs as a Function of
Backgate Bias,” in IEEE Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit
Symposium (CSICs), Oct 2014, pp. 1–4.
[9] W. Wu, R. Staszewski, and J. Long, “A 56.4-to-63.4 GHz Multi-Rate
All-Digital Fractional-N PLL for FMCW Radar Applications in 65 nm
CMOS,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 49, no. 5, pp. 1081–
1096, May 2014.
[10] M. Motoyoshi, K. Takano, T. Yoshida, K. Katayama, S. Amakawa,
and M. Fujishima, “79GHz CMOS power amplifier using temperature
compensation bias,” in 9th European Microwave Integrated Circuit
Conference (EuMIC), Oct 2014, pp. 49–52.
[11] T. Shimura, H. Matsumura, Y. Kawano, M. Sato, T. Suzuki, and
Y. Ohashi, “Multi-channel Low-noise receiver and transmitter for 76-
81 GHz automotive radar systems in 65 nm CMOS,” in 44th European
Microwave Conference (EuMC), Oct 2014, pp. 596–599.
[12] J. Hasch, E. Topak, R. Schnabel, T. Zwick, R. Weigel, and C. Wald-
schmidt, “Millimeter-Wave Technology for Automotive Radar Sensors in
the 77 GHz Frequency Band,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory
and Techniques, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 845–860, March 2012.
[13] M. Leitgeb, Advanced PCB Technologies. ATS, 2014.
[14] E. Seler, M. Wojnowski, W. Hartner, W. Sorgel, J. Bock, R. Lachner,
J. Hasch, and R. Weigel, “Chip-to-rectangular waveguide transition
realized in embedded Wafer Level Ball Grid Array (eWLB) package,”
in IEEE 15th Annual Wireless and Microwave Technology Conference
(WAMICON), June 2014, pp. 1–4.
[15] O. Khan, J. Pontes, X. Li, and C. Waldschmidt, “A wideband variable
width microstrip grid array antenna,” in European Microwave Confer-
ence (EuMC), 2014 44th, Oct 2014, pp. 1644–1647.
[16] S. Y. Kim, O. Inac, C.-Y. Kim, D. Shin, and G. Rebeiz, “A 76-84 GHz
16-Element Phased-Array Receiver With a Chip-Level Built-In Self-
Test System,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques,
vol. 61, no. 8, pp. 3083–3098, Aug 2013.
[17] O. Lange, “Optimierung von Antennenarrays zur verbesserten Rich-
tungsschätzung für automobile Radarsysteme,” Ph.D. dissertation, Uni-
versität Stuttgart, 2012.
[18] C. Schmid, R. Feger, C. Pfeffer, and A. Stelzer, “Motion compensation
and efficient array design for TDMA FMCW MIMO radar systems,”
in 6th European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP),
March 2012, pp. 1746–1750.
[19] A. Hassanien and S. Vorobyov, “Phased-MIMO Radar: A Tradeoff
Between Phased-Array and MIMO Radars,” IEEE Transactions on
Signal Processing, vol. 58, no. 6, pp. 3137–3151, June 2010.
[20] H. Rohling, “Smart FM / CW radar systems for automotive applica-
tions,” in IEEE Radar Conference, May 2008.
[21] A. Stove, “Linear FMCW radar techniques,” IEE Proceedings on Radar
and Signal Processing, vol. 139, no. 5, pp. 343–350, Oct 1992.
[22] V. Giannini, D. Guermandi, Q. Shi, A. Medra, W. Van Thillo, A. Bour-
doux, and P. Wambacq, “A 79 GHz Phase-Modulated 4 GHz-BW
CW Radar Transmitter in 28 nm CMOS,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State
Circuits, vol. 49, no. 12, pp. 2925–2937, Dec 2014.
[23] W. Wiesbeck, “Future Radar Systems.”
[24] A. Frischen, J. Hasch, and C. Waldschmidt, “Performance degradation
in cooperative radar sensor systems due to Uncorrelated Phase Noise,”
in 11th European Radar Conference (EuRAD), Oct 2014, pp. 241–244.
[25] S. H. Bayless, A. Guan, P. Son, S. Murphy, and A. J. Shaw, Connected
Vehicle Insights: Trends in Roadway Domain Active Sensing, ser. Tech-
nology Scan Series 2012-2014. ITS America, 2014.