60GHz antenna-in-package radar IC for industry

Texas Instruments has turned to 45nm RF CMOS process to squeeze a 60GHz radar, including antenna, into an 11 x 6.7mm package only 0.8mm tall.

IWRL6432AOP is an FMCW radar that works over 57 to 63.9GHz and at distances up to 25m.

It includes: an RF and analogue front-end, an Arm Cortex-M3 processor to configure, control and calibrate the front-end, a 160MHz Cortex-M4F (with floating point) to run application code, and a hardware accelerator for executing common radar processing algorithms such as FFT, CFAR (‘constant false alarm rate’), scaling and compression.

Multiple power domains are implemented to ease consumption, and the processors have multiple low-power states – “The device provides the option of keeping some contents of the device retained in such scenarios, like [an] application image or RF profile,” said TI.

Confusingly, ‘IWRL6432AOP’ is a brand, and actual part numbers begin IWRL6432BR… (pre-production samples are XI6432BR…)

Parts differ in options for: a deep sleep mode, functional safety hardware and authenticated boot hardware. IWRL6432BRBAAMY is the super-set device.

Functional safety versions are aimed at SIL-2 level, for which the company is seeking compliance certification.

The front-end has three 5MHz IF bandwidth real-only receive channels and two transmit channels with a chirp option.

Applictions are foreseen in industrial applications such as presence and motion detection in building and factory automation, and commercial and residential security. Gesture detection or recognition for human machine interfaces is another potential use.

Find the IWRL6432AOP product page here and TI, which makes a number of similar radar ICs, has a mmWave radome design guide which is worth a look.