NXP Drives 4D Imaging Radar Chip to Production, Adds New Product Tailored for L2+ Market

January 04, 2022

News

NXP Semiconductors announced two updates to its automotive radar portfolio, now designed-in at 20 top global OEMs.

The industry’s first dedicated 16nm imaging radar processor, the NXP S32R45, has been released into mass production, with initial customer ramp-up starting in the first half 2022. Additionally, the new NXP S32R41 has been introduced to extend 4D imaging radar’s benefits to a much larger number of vehicles. Together these processors serve the L2+ through L5 autonomy sectors, enabling 4D imaging radar for 360-degree surround sensing.

According to the company, NXP’s 4D imaging radar is the first to deliver concurrent 3-in-1 multi-mode radar sensing across short-, mid-, and long-range operation, enabling the simultaneous sensing of a wide field of view around the car. To achieve this, NXP leverages an architecture to boost performance beyond raw sensor hardware capabilities with a low-complexity sensor configuration utilizing 192 virtual antenna channels. The boost is enabled by the combination of proprietary radar hardware acceleration which can deliver up to 64x the compute performance of standard processors, super-resolution radar software algorithms to achieve sub-degree angular resolution and advanced MIMO waveforms that allow simultaneous operation of antenna channels. This architecture is also designed to help overcome the limitations of other high-resolution sensors like LIDAR and high antenna count massive MIMO radar.

Per the company, the introduction of the S32R41 delivers the industry’s first 16nm radar processor tailored for L2+ autonomous driving applications, which some industry analysts project could account for close to 50% of vehicle production by 2030. The L2+ segment, which was not well served by classical high-resolution sensors, will now benefit from 4D imaging radar sensing with up to six corner, front and rear radar sensors in 360-degree surround fashion.

The S32R45 radar processor is the flagship of NXP’s 6th generation automotive radar chipset family. It helps to enable autonomous driving, from L2+ through the most demanding L5 use cases, where more than ten imaging radar sensors per vehicle may be required. It also addresses transportation, traffic management, and other industrial applications where reliable high-resolution sensing is required.

The combination of NXP’s S32R45 and S32R41 radar processors with the NXP TEF82xx RFCMOS transceivers delivers the fine angular resolution, processing power, and range required for production-ready imaging radar solutions. The S32R platform offers a common architecture for software reuse and speedy development along with a highly performant hardware security engine, OTA update support, and compliance with the newest cybersecurity standards.

NXP will be at CES 2022, Booth [CP-18]. Visitors to the NXP booth at CES can see a live demonstration of NXP’s radar capabilities via an imaging radar sensor built in collaboration with radar platform and ADAS application expert CubTEK, showcasing enhanced 4D sensing capability with its ability to deliver image-like sensing and sub-degree angular resolution.

For more information about the S32R45 and S32R41 processors, visit: www.nxp.com/s32r45 or www.nxp.com/s32r41