The TEF8101EN from NXP Semiconductors is a single-chip Automotive FMCW Radar Transceiver for short, medium, and long-range radar applications, operating from 76 GHz to 81 GHz. This IC offers a fully integrated solution for all critical mm-wave functions, in combination with ADCs at each receiver path. The mm-wave front end part consists of a waveform generator offering flexible chirp control, three transmit chains featuring binary phase control and output level stabilization, and four receive chains with high input compression and low noise figure.
Each receive chain contains high-pass filters for suppression of strong low-frequency signals, as well as low-pass filter functionality for suppression of signals in the ADC aliasing band. Each receive chain includes a 12-bit SAR ADC sampling at an effective rate of 40 MS/s (M samples per second). The ADC is followed by a programmable decimation filter with decimation factors of 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16.
The chip uses a full-duplex SPI interface with 40 Mbps maximal transfer rate for bi-directional exchange of control and monitoring data between the Radar IC and a host microcontroller. It contains a functional safety monitoring circuit, keeping track of key operational parameters such as chip temperature, status of RF connections to the PCB board, locking status of the PLLs during a frequency chirp, etc.
The TEF8101EN is available in an eWLB package that measures 7.5 x 7.5 mm and has a 15 x 15 mm sized Ball Grid Array (BGA) with 0.5 mm pitch for easy interfacing to a wide range of antenna board technologies. It is suitable for various automotive applications such as autonomous emergency braking (AEB), adaptive cruise control (ACC), narrow path assist, lateral collision avoidance, side pre-crash, traffic jam assist, lane change assist (LCA), blind sport detection (BSD), read cross-traffic alert (RCTA), rear-pre-crash and parking assist.
