A multimode 76-to-81GHz automotive radar transceiver with autonomous monitoring

Radar is a key sensing technology for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous vehicles due to its strong detection capability, long range, and robustness to environmental variations such as inclement weather and lighting extremes. As these radars demonstrate increased levels of integration and performance [1,3], it is desired to have a single multimode radar transceiver that can address the stringent form factor constraints of corner radars and the wide and narrow field-of-view requirements of front radars used in urban and highway driving, respectively. This paper presents a single-chip 76-to-81 GHz radar transceiver, which utilizes frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) synthesis, 3 transmitters, and 4 receivers with integrated ADCs, built in a 45nm CMOS technology. It achieves high resolution and flexible multimode operation to address all classes of short, medium, and long range. The design also features autonomous fault monitoring of the RF chain to support system-level functional safety.