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In today's world, radars have become an essential tool for not only military but a range of consumer applications as well. In the military field, the need for improved survivability, low probability of intercept and longer detection range has oriented the industry towards active antenna arrays using solid state technologies. There were drastic changes in the radar industry in the past decade with the possibility to use more integrated and lighter devices together with the advanced capabilities offered by multiple beam-shaping and steering, which motivated the transition from vacuum tubes to solid state solutions.
The Yole Group of Companies, including Yole Développement and System Plus Consulting, have deeply investigated the radar technology landscape and related industries to develop a report that gives a detailed up-to-date picture of this industry. Yole recently released its new technology & market analysis called Status of the Radar Industry: Players, Applications and Technology Trends 2020 report. In this study, analysts cover the complete radar industry, including automotive radar market forecasts extended to in-cabin occupancy detection, along with automotive radar imaging, defense, security and aerospace, industrial, consumer and medical market forecasts. This new report also points out market and technology trends, supply chain and market share per segment.
In addition, System Plus Consulting proposes a special focus on a selection of key radar solutions developed by the leading companies, MediaTek and Texas Instruments: Mediatek Autus R10 (MT2706) 77/79 GHz eWLB/AiP Radar Chipset and Texas Instruments AWR1843AoP 7779 GHz Radar Chipset.
The report tries to answer the following questions:
What is the status of the radar industry?
- How will the market evolve?
- Who are the players?
- Who are the key suppliers to watch and what technologies do they provide?
- What are the technical challenges?
As analyzed by Yole’s team, radars for automotive applications have now become standard equipment. Regarding the major incoming transformations, and following more stringent test scenarios, two trends are emerging:
- One consists of moving forward with imaging radars capable of more accurately describing the scene in front of and around the car.
- The other is to increase the number of sensors around the car and coordinate them to improve scene perception.
In both cases, a strong emphasis on signal processing and computing is emerging, while cost issues particularly matter in automotive. Multiple questions have been raised about where to move the signal processing and how better to exploit radar sensor inputs. This will likely contribute to a major transformation of the automotive radar industry.
Nevertheless, one of the most game-changing evolutions is the potential acceptance of radars for HMIs (Human Machine Interface) through penetration in consumer electronics, where cost, integration and resolution are most challenging. Again, this requires a lot of computing and software. All these factors have induced strong technological changes in this market that was slow paced several years ago. According to Yole’s analysts, prior to automotive penetration, the radar industry was a huge, mature market. But now, it is expected to show a 5% CAGR between 2019 and 2025. This is high given its large size and formerly slow growth of the segment.
Defense is the biggest radar market. It has been and will be steady year over year. And today it represents more than half of the total radar market. Yole’s analysts expect a moderate 3% CAGR between 2019 and 2025 for this particular segment. This is in line with its mature dynamics and nations’ budget constraints.
On the other hand, the automotive market is expected to grow at an 11% CAGR, and the consumer market at up to 70% CAGR. Automotive radar market growth has been impressive in the last decade and will pursue up to 2025 with the trend toward ADAS and HAD.
This growth is due to the recent development of radars for the automotive market and the nascent nature of consumer applications. These two fast moving markets are the radar industry’s growth drivers. However, the industrial radar market will suffer a decline at first. Nevertheless, new demand coming from building automation will dampen the losses and actually result in a 1% CAGR during the 2019-2025 period. The medical market is still in the incubation stage.
In this dynamic industry, many actors are strongly involved and propose innovative solutions. System Plus Consulting identified, for example, Mediatek and its Autus R10 (MT2706) 77/79 GHz eWLB/AiP Radar Chipset and Texas Instrument with its AWR1843AoP 77/79 GHz Radar Chipset. The companies proposed significant reverse engineering and costing analysis dedicated to both RF electronics modules.
The Texas Instruments AWR1843AoP 77/79 GHz radar chipset is the world’s first 76-81 GHz automotive single-chip radar, announces System Plus Consulting. It is a SoC device with integrated Antenna-on-Package (AoP). Last year, Texas Instruments entered the radar chipset market with the first highly-integrated radar sensor chip, the AWR1642. Unlike its competitors, it chose to integrate more than just a transmitter, receiver and local oscillator on the same SoC by adding an MCU and a DSP. This year, Texas Instruments is trying to keep ahead of its competitors by upgrading its previous chip with an integrated AoP in the AWR1843AoP.
Click here to read the Status of the Radar Industry: Players, Applications and Technology Trends 2020 report.
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