TSP #236 - A 77GHz Automotive Radar Module Measurement, Reverse Engineering & RFIC/Antenna Analysis 

Please try NXP chips all TX and RX and processing in one chip

3.9 cm at the speed of light.

@@user-sd3ik9rt6d 3.9 mm!

​@@user-sd3ik9rt6d*3,9mm or the antenna would be way longer

6 GHz I am done .... 😞

@@user-sd3ik9rt6d 3.9 mm 😊

exactly lol

LOL!!

2 GHz every minute, fantastic

...enjoyed best at 1.25x speed. Pure gold.

I've got one of those TI mm-wave radar devkits somewhere

@@EEVblog have you done a video on it?

This sensor looked really special to me (for a automotive sensor). Can you give some background? What's the purpose of this, it doesn't look like a series sensor to me.

@@michaegi4717 "Built" is not necessary the same as "designed".

@@dtiydr Yes, I also don't design the sensors that my company produces. But I still know such essentials. :-)

​@@michaegi4717 What exactly strikes you as "special"? To me it looks like usual modern automotive radar module, but maybe I'm missing something. Thanks!

​@@szymon0900 Hi, those that I usually handle are smaller. I miss heating elements for the radom (or the connections were just not shown in the video and the heating is in this thick part of the radom? I also wondered why the part in front of the antenna is especially thick, as this generates additional disturbance. I also wondered why the housing is made from plastic, as I imagine that it's hard to get rid of the heat. The CAN connector looks bulky to me and I wonder if this is really water prove. I can't see how this will be mounted, there are no screw holes and I can't positions for any clips. All this caught my attention, so I asked, because I thought that GurpreetKakar might be able to give some background.

Its not a communications channel. Any signal you send would get chopped up and mutilated by the signal processor. I think the most you can do is jam or spoof the radar into thinking something is close or far to the radar.

Indeed jamming is the most you can hope for. In some really rare situations one may be able to "fool" the radar - but I would imagine the DSP would run multiple ambiguity resolving before making decisions.

One way to stop a car with this tech is to open an umbrella face. The car "sees" a wall. Useful if crossing a multi lane where drivers dont like to yeild.

RF circuit design very interesting

Another topic would be as there is probably lot of crashed cars and those radars still intact , how to re-use it for something useful :)

This is likely and a conclusion I came to after the video was posted as well. Thanks!

The R&S FSW has a pre-selector YIG up to about 90GHz. But that instrument is about half a million dollars. :)

the preselector "only" goes up to 85 GHz apparently :D

@Thesignalpath That's pretty impressive. I found a quick app note that describes a 5 GHz BW analysis setup. You need the FSW85 along with an external 6 GHz scope for the digitizer: scdn.rohde-schwarz.com/ur/pws/dl_downloads/dl_common_library/dl_news_from_rs/219/NEWS_219__01_FSW85__EN.pdf Not a cheap setup but you can get leveled and equalized FMCW analysis at 77 GHz in real time!

They must use the unpreselected path for wideband capture, the internal preselector only have 80MHz bandwidth at 50GHz. I think the preselector only useful for out-of-band signal check in very wideband capture.(Narrow Sweeping) With good frequency planning(wide IF bandwidth eliminate sweeping,good LO&IF Frequency for IF filtering,non-harmonic mixer), If no out-of-band signal near origin image frequency, no image assured, so we can bypass preselector. But SAs use harmonic mixer at high frequency ,and it's difficult to use in wideband capture

@@0io1 very good points, thanks. Now that you say it, I saw a block diagram of the FSW in a presentation at some point, and you're right, the preselector is bypassed.

Just a thin strand of fiber.

Sure it is allowed. I have taken apart and reversed engineered 60GHz AESA on the channel before. :)

@@Thesignalpath Video #207? I was thinking more about the low POI and anti jamming stuff that is on fast jets and navy ships.

Only ITAR on AESA is for space craft/satellites.

@@ZergZfTwI think the hard part there is getting one, I don’t think they end up on eBay all that often…

You meant military not consumer. If I get my hand on one…

@donepearce And yet...

@@jessiepooch And yet, maybe ultimate performance is not an issue here and they can accept poor matching.

Would say that is a happy side effect of making the cover out of a carbon and iron oxide loaded thermoplastic, likely HDPE. Likely a thermoplastic that is extruded and the biaxially stretched to a thin film, then gets vacuum formed to the shape, and then die cut out. That is very cheap, and automotive is all about cheap, cutting a tenth of a cent every time. The thermal compound pads are more likely there to provide thermal mass, as the main chipset likely only operates in pulses, not continuously, so needs the large thermal mass to absorb the heat pulses as the main DSP does it's half second wake up and few scans, then goes back to sleep, and the large thermal mass allows the heat to dissipate. You can see in the bike one the same, pulsed operation, so the blue thermal transfer compound can absorb the heat and slowly spread it out to the large area of the case. After all a blind spot sensor really is a slow reacting sensor, as the vehicle approaching is doing so at a low relative velocity, and it only has to look for a metallic return that is large enough, in the area covered by the beam formed by the transmit and receive antennas, and then have the CAN interface send a message to the BCM of a vehicle detected, so that the driver display can show a flag, or a tone, and the SRS system knows there is a close in object, so the potential for collision is there. 6 wire interface, 2 are power and ground, 2 are the CAN interface, and the other 2 are for the LED behind the mirror, to light up to indicate there is a vehicle there, and also likely also to drive the turn repeater LED, as it makes little sense to run an extra wire up to the mirror (extra cost, extra wire, and the extra test steps for the incoming inspection to do to verify the loom, plus the simple cost of placing this extra wire into the channel for it) when you already have a CAN transceiver there, and plenty of spare processing capacity in the firmware, plus plenty of IO pins unused, to handle the extra broadcast messages of light on at side, and light off. Heated mirror is simply a PTC element that is powered with the mirror, so that it draws max power at under 5C, and then heats mirror up to 50C in use. With that cover, another thing that affects the unit is the actual reflective layer on the mirror, that also likely has been specified to be avoiding certain thicknesses of coats, and also has a minimum thickness coat, so as to be a good light reflector, and also a max thickness coat, to handle attenuation of this 77GHz signal. Will guess the mirror is a critical part of the system, and the wrong one will likely result in the system not working well, or having continuous faults recorded for signal strength.

They're too far apart, any scanning will immediately form a bunch of grating lobes. The Rx antenna can digitally scan though, since those elements are spaced closer together

@@RubinGrolsch Yeah I was originally thinking the left side was a 4 element TX AESA with four separate IF streams coming from the other board. I couldn't figure out what to make of the weird non-uniform spacing on the right.

Yes, you are right!

Are there any papers about this topology? Can someone help me out?

Adds richer focus sauce to the phase for enhanced data details received then compared. Spicy.

Onlyfans. ;)

@xabhax Diy add-on approx. 280gbp

I am describing how it works based on my own knowledge, there is no information from the manufacturer.

@@Thesignalpath Then I congratulate you on your comprehensive knowledge. ✔️

A differential co-planer pair of wires would likely be too thin and therefore not only lossy but also difficult to realize on PCBs accurately.

Conditions inside and outside of the IC are different.

No, a 2.4GHz radar cannot do the same thing. Not only does it not have the available bandwidth, a similar antenna configuration would be much larger at that frequency. There is a reason why we don't use 2.4GHz to build automotive radar.

It doesn’t need to be glued. It also doesn’t need to be so thick to solve any vibration issue. It lowers the tolerances which I suspect is the reason because everything is thermally welded and has poor tolerance. No screws at all.

They do but they are also very strong.

Yeah... A tilt has developed.

...and the cool Enterprise painting is being obscured!

My wallet has a built-in sphincter muscle that pre-empts that much expensive hi-tech weight.

See my pinned comment.

Good points; millions!. Doesn't the FCC give them separate play pens? The error detection routines for like-systems must sort all that out when those short pulses happen to line up at exactly the same time once and a while.

Have a look into Spread Spectrum of GPS and the 2 Voyager vehicles 😁 There is explained how code separation works. With spread spectrum you can listen below noise level ! But I don't know exactly how it's working here

It seems like the only viable solution to this problem is stereoscopic image processing ....

No, RX is on the left TX on the right. As for comparison between SAR, MIMO & SIMO, see my pinned comment. The part number for all the components are also indication what is what on this board. There is no debate here.

> FMCW phase array radar to measure the angle and distance. Yes, FMCW as I mentioned in the video and is confirmed by the chirp generator. However, it is not a simple phased array. It is digitizing each RX antenna on the left separately and simultaneously, again, as I explained in the video. There is a considerable processing involved here because we have a digital beam former in the back-end - again confirmed by the analog front-end. We also have the part number of the components - there is no doubt what is what here - RX on the left, TX on the right. See my pinned comment.

RU-vid (And books)

I’ll adjust the equalizer balance, I think I have better settings. As for the speed, please watch it at 0.75x if you find it too fast.