Autonomous driving is now the next big thing in the automotive industry. The on-set of numerous innovations and vision technologies have also aided the development of autonomous driving, providing functionalities and safety to drivers and passengers. Among these vision technologies, radar systems have been proven to be most effective technology.
According to a report published by Yole Développement (Yole), the global radar market will reach US $8.6 billion by 2025, at a 2015 CAGR of 15.6%. According to the report, the 24 GHz radar frequency band held a large part of the 2018 market share with sales of US $2.2 billion. This segment will continue to grow unitl 2020 before being replaced by 79 GHz high-resolution short range radar that enables mapping of the entire car’s surroundings. Many players including Veoneer, Aptiv, Hella are also transitioning to 77 GHz radar for short and middle-range sensing.
Yole’s report - Radar and Wireless for Automotive: Market and Technology Trends 2019 - reveals the status of radar technologies and their applications. What are the major drivers? What will the market look like in 2025? What are the current technologies and the emerging ones? Yole’s analysts have proposed a comprehensive overview of the radar market and technology landscape. In addition, the report offers a deep understanding of automotive grade radar, V2X, connectivity and GNSS solutions.
While automotive segments, AD and ADAS safety follow different dynamics, both benefit from each other. ADAS is well-established in the automotive industry, with features like AEB becoming standard in 2018 for many middle-end cars from OEMs including Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, and Hyundai. Due to the complexity linked to environment perception (i.e. pedestrians crossing a street for instance), radar performance has been continuously improved for safety purposes, which has proven beneficial for the commercial Automotive Driving market.
Today’s ADAS market, according to the Yole report, is dominated by Continental, Bosch, Denso, and Hella. Meanwhile, the AD market has attracted new entrants and startups like Magna which unveiled a 4D high resolution module; Hitachi Automotive which announced the smallest-ever long-range radar; Alps Electric’s ultra-short-range radar is featured in GM’s Cruise AD platform; and at least 15 startups are proposing novel approaches for high-resolution radar.
In 77 GHz MMIC and chipsets the trend is towards higher integration, with market leaders NXP and Infineon Technologies creating integrated transceivers, and Texas Instruments even adding signal processing in its transceivers. The radar MMIC ecosystem is expected to move from an IDM6 to a fabless/foundry model, with volumes increasing and the technology transitioning to advanced technology nodes. The IDMs of yesterday could become the fabless of tomorrow.
The Yole Group of companies including Yole Développement (Yole) and System Plus Consulting are together following the radar technologies for automotive applications for a while. Recently System Plus Consulting released two dedicated reports: Automotive Radar Comparison 2018 and Ainstein K-77 Long Range Radar featuring Calterah CAL77A2T4R FOWLP Transceiver. The comparative technology study provides insights on technology data for RF chipsets and antenna boards in radar systems. It includes the study of fifteen radar systems from several OEMs, including Continental, Veoneer, ZF, Valeo, Bosch, Aptiv, Denso and Ainstein. From its side, the Ainstein K-77 Long Range radar report is the latest one from the RF report collection. Released beginning of 2019, this reverse engineering and costing analysis presents the next-generation mid- & long-range, wideband and high-resolution radar sensor for ADAS based on RF CMOS technology using eWLB packaging.
Yole Développement and System Plus Consulting will also be exhibiting at the European Microwave Week 2019 (EuMW) event to be held in Paris, France, from Sept. 29 to Oct. 4 (Booth B577). Experts from the companies will be proposing a relevant presentation “Autonomous Drive Sensors and Fusion Market Overview”.
Click here to read the complete Yole radar report.
