On Oct. 20, Calterah unveiled two new mmWave radar chip product families, Alps-Mini and Rhine-Mini.
A Mini IC integrates an FMCW radar RF front-end transceiver system, which includes a dual-channel transmitter and a dual-channel receiver, capable of operation in the 59–64 GHz (for Rhine-Mini) or the 76–81 GHz (for Alps-Mini) band, with a 4 GHz continuous sweep and an output power up to 12 dBm. The chip also supports a maximum ADC sampling rate of 25 MS/s, peak search, and several algorithms to implement CFAR detection with a 512 KiB baseband SRAM. As an auto-grade product, it meets the requirements of the AEC-Q100 qualification and ISO 26262 ASIL-B standard, with two packages available, standard package and AiP (antenna in package).
While resembling Alps and Rhine in the high-performance RF front-end, auto-grade operating temperature, reliability, and proprietary radar signal processing hardware accelerator, Mini is upgraded with a dual-core processor and a cybersecurity unit for encryption and compliance with desired cybersecurity standards. Furthermore, compared to Alps and Rhine, Mini is 40% smaller in size with a typical power consumption of 0.8 W and over 20% of the main chip cost reduction. The ICs have been made smaller, safer, smarter, and more power efficient as the market requires, living up to the tagline “Mini, but Mighty”.
According to Calterah, as of the third quarter, the company has hit the milestone of one million accumulated IC unit shipments, with a growing partnership with over 400 customers from the auto, industrial, and consumer markets. As more mmWave ICs break into these markets, mmWave radar is also extending the boundary of its applications, from autonomous driving in the beginning to many other fields like smart cabin, security and surveillance, smart home, smart city, etc. At the product launch, Calterah demoed in-cabin occupancy detection and USRR environment modeling implemented by Calterah AiP chip products via videos produced both on its own and by its customer. In addition to automotive applications, indoor human detection enabled by Mini was also showed, which signified the rise of mmWave radar in elderly care and smart home in the future.
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