Automotive Radar using AWR2243 Booster Pack

In developing countries the growth in the number of motor vehicles is the most significant factor in the rise of road fatalities and injuries. It may be observed that 1.35 million people die every year owing to crashes on road. Most of the accidents can be prevented if the events are detected automatically 1-2 seconds in advance. Texas instruments has come up with a new evaluation board AWR2243 having a single chip operating at 76 to 81Ghz having a FMCW transceiver. This can be instrumental in adaptive cruise control, emergency braking and automated highway driving. A FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave) obtains the range and velocity from a beat signal. Here millimeter-wave sensors use minimal power consumption to sense range and velocity and the required angle. The device is interfaced to an external DSP host processor which uses a SYNC_IN signal to start the radar frames. The periodicity of the frames is suitability programmed. The processing provides a high level of performance and flexibility. The signal has three parallel transmit chains and four parallel receive chains. Each receive channel has an LNA, mixer, IF filtering, A2D conversion and decimation. A two- dimensional FFT algorithm is implemented on the host DSP processor.