NXP Wins Prestigious Automotive Innovation Award with Radar Chip

At the 2017 Automotive Innovation Awards held in Den Haag, NXP Semiconductors N.V. was awarded the esteemed prize for the best Dutch innovation in the automotive branch.
 
NXP was selected for the award in the Technology category with its Radar chip – the TEF810X. The chip uses RFCMOS technology for ultra-compact system design. Invented and designed in Eindhoven in cooperation with teams in Bangalore and Hamburg, it has been used in field tests with Google self-driving cars, and in radar specialist Hella’s automotive CompactRadar solution.
 
Cars are equipped with an increasing number of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) based on a variety of sensors, such as radar, to increase the safety of drivers and passengers. To use this technology on a large scale requires affordable, compact and reliable sensors; the TEF810X is the heart of such radar sensors. Self-driving cars are expected to use a radar cocoon setup with multiple sensors around the car to allow for a 360-degree view.
 
This high degree of integration makes it possible to reduce the size of radar sensors by 50%, from the size of a deck of cards to the size of a postage stamp and to simplify them. Instead of combining three to four chips on a printed circuit board, manufacturers of sensors can now use one chip. Energy consumption also decreases, as the connections between the functions are no longer made through the printed circuit board, but are integrated into the chip.
 
The radar chip is expected to have a major societal impact because of its promise in improved traffic safety. The European New Car Assessment Programme (NCAP) has researched the effect of Autonomous Emergency Braking, concluding that it can reduce the number of rear-end collisions by 38 %.
 
“About 1.3 million people die in road accidents every year. We believe that Radar can play a key role in reducing that figure significantly, making global roads much safer than today,” said Kurt Sievers, EVP and GM Automotive at NXP Semiconductors.
 
The TEF810X RFCMOS Radar Transceiver is scheduled to go into production in early 2018.