Automated Driving Functions: ZF Captures Contract for 4D Full-Range Radar with Chinese OEM

• ZF will produce Full-Range Radar for SAIC in China
• Four-dimensional, high-resolution radar enables advanced safety and automated driving functions
• 192 channels – 16 times more resolution than typical #automotive radar – for very detailed scene and object detection within a range of 350 meters.

Friedrichshafen, Germany – ZF has received a production contract for its Full-Range Radar #technology from China’s #saicmotorcorporation. The ZF Full-Range Radar perceives vehicle surroundings in four dimensions, including height, making it similar in capability to optical sensors such as cameras and LiDAR. In combination with these technologies, high-resolution radar can help provide the necessary safety and reliability for semi to highly automated driving including level 4.

Full-Range Radar #technology offers high resolution for 4 dimensions: range, velocity, azimuth (horizontal) and elevation. The addition of the elevation angle helps generate an enhanced 3D image of the traffic situation, enriched with speed information, resulting in high-resolution environment sensing. This type of data helps a vehicle on a highway to detect the end of a traffic jam under a bridge at an early stage and brake accordingly. The Full-Range Radar also provides information that helps detect the edge of the road and whether there are free passing areas at the side of the road.

Full-Range Radar has considerably higher resolution than mid-range radars, which typically only have 12 channels (three transmitters, four receivers). In ZF's Full-Range Radar, the number of channels is 16 times greater: Four Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) chips are combined resulting in a total of 192 channels available.

“ZF’s Full-Range Radar represents a significant step forward in sensing technologies,” explains #christophemarnat, Executive Vice President, for ZF’s Electronics and ADAS division. “With its high levels of object and scene recognition and long-range detection, the Full Range Radar is a key to help meet the high perception requirements of L3 and L4 AD at a competitive price level. This sensor is also capable of significantly increasing the potential performance of advanced safety and L2+ driving applications.”

The Full Range Radar‘s high information density enables very detailed object recognition. For example, it receives around 10 data points from a pedestrian instead of just one or two compared to typical #automotive radars, allowing more precise information as radars register the speed of the measured object for each measuring point. ZF’s Full-Range Radar can even resolve the movement of individual limbs – allowing the sensor to potentially recognize in which direction the pedestrian is walking.

Equipped for the future with the ZF Full-Range Radar

Full-Range Radar is an important addition to ZF’s comprehensive sensor set for automated driving functions. With an aperture angle of +/-60 degrees, it is designed for a wide range of situations: from slow city traffic to driving on country roads and highways. At 350 meters, the range is well above the current state-of-the-art. It utilizes the 77 gigahertz band and the Fast Ramp Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) modulation shared with other radar sensors from ZF.

ZF will begin supplying Full-Range Radar to SAIC in 2022.