Technavio has published a new report that provides an analysis of the most important trends in the global automotive radar sensors market expected to impact the market outlook from 2017-2021.
They have compiled the data for the automotive radar sensors market by using a bottom-up sizing approach. They assimilated the sizes for of the different constituent markets by application. They then further refined the data by applying selective significance to each constituent market depending on the incidence of automotive radar sensors in the market.
According to the report, long-range radar sensors will be more prevalent in North America and Western Europe owing to the presence of a large consumer base that prefers autonomy. The US, especially, is the hotbed of testing and implementation of autonomous vehicles by Google and Tesla. In 2015, more than 81% of sales of Tesla vehicles was from the US. The country was followed by Canada, accounting for 6% of the sales.
The top three emerging trends driving the global automotive radar sensors market according to Technavio automotive research analysts are listed below.
Bi-static radar sensors to win over mono-static radar sensors due to stringent requirements
Detection range is the main specification for long- and mid-range radar systems. Obtaining a high detection range requires high transmitter output power and highly sensitivity receiver. Meeting such stringent performance goals is more difficult for monostatic radar systems when compared with their bi-static counterparts.
The use of a coupler in front of the antenna in the case of monostatic radars has been found to introduce additional loss in the RF path. This loss, in turn, degrades the noise performance of the system and affects the conversion gain of the receiver and the output power of the transmitter.
Ray-tracing simulation is expected to replace drive testing of automotive radar sensor
Systems that consist of regions of varying propagation velocity, absorption characteristics, and reflecting surfaces are the reality, and modern radar waves need to pass through such media to be effective. Usually, under such varied circumstances, wavefronts may bend, change direction, or reflect off surfaces, thus complicating their analysis.
SoC solutions are expected to become new normal in automotive radar sensors market
System-on-chip (SoC) solutions are currently the go-to technology that can incorporate multiple sensors on a single hardware platform. Due to the current micro-trend for micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)-based sensors being in the aegis of monolithic design, there is an increased need for optimized integration. SoC is an integrated circuit that incorporates multiple systems on a single chip.
The primary requirement of a SoC-based MEMS sensor solution would be of the fundamental nature (i.e., size). Further miniaturization of sensors is expected to become necessary. Currently, the node size of a usual automotive sensor is around the range of 48-28 nm.
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