Renesas Electronics Unveils Automotive Radar Solution to Bolster ADAS and Autonomous Driving Vehicles

Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced its first RH850-based, 32-bit, automotive radar microcontroller (MCU) series, the RH850/V1R, that will deliver the high performance and features required for enabling future advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving vehicles. The RH850/V1R-M, the first product from the RH850/V1R Series, includes a digital signal processor (DSP, Note 1) and high speed serial interfaces and is specifically designed for middle- to long-range radars.

Software and tools including evaluation boards will also become available to enable the system developers to start their development immediately with the RH850/V1R-M solution.

With the expansion of ADAS and autonomous driving, sensors are fast becoming a key technology. Currently vehicles are being equipped with a broad spectrum of sensors such as cameras, lidar and ultrasonic sensors. In particular, radar sensors are required for ADAS applications, including advanced emergency braking and adaptive cruise control, because, unlike other sensors, radar sensors are not negatively affected by external environmental limitations which includes adverse weather conditions, such as rain, fog or whether the sun is shining or not.

Additionally, high precision sensing becomes critical in realizing future autonomous driving to meet the increasing requirements of range resolution, separation of objects and precision in measurement of velocity. This requires increased numbers of antennas and boosting of the signal processing performance.

To address these needs, Renesas launched the new RH850/V1R-M MCU specifically designed for radar applications in ADAS. The new MCU includes optimized, programmable digital signal processing, a dual core at 320 megahertz (MHz) with industry-leading high speed flash of 2 megabyte (MB), a 2 MB internal RAM, while meeting the industry’s highest temperature requirements.