FMCW radar sensor for automotive applications

Mouser now offers the AWR294x FMCW radar sensor from Texas Instruments. The device is a single-chip mmWave sensor and FMCW transceiver (76GHz to 81GHz band) with radar data processing elements and peripherals excellent for low-power, self-monitored, ultra-accurate radar systems in automotive in-vehicle networking applications.

This radar sensor features TI's low-power 45nm RFCMOS and a user-programmable Arm Cortex-R5F processor to streamline automotive interface and custom control applications in a small form factor with minimal BOM. The device integrated PLL, mixer, VCO, and baseband ADC with DSP subsystem feature its high-performance C66x DSP for radar signal processing, including a radio processor subsystem responsible for radar front-end control, configuration, and calibration.

The device's hardware accelerator block (HWA 2.0) streamlines common radar processing, saving processing power and resources for custom applications and higher-level algorithms. Simple programming model changes can allow reconfiguration for implementing a multimode sensor. A hardware security module with a programmable Arm Cortex-M4 core supplies a secure operation zone.

The AWR2944EVM radar sensor evaluation module is a simple-to-use platform for demonstrating and developing the AWR2944 radar sensor. The kit contains everything needed to start developing software for the on-chip C66x DSP, Arm Cortex-R5F controller, and hardware accelerator (HWA 2.0). Also included is onboard emulation for programming and debugging, and onboard buttons and LEDs for quick integration of a simple user interface.