FEATURE MCUS & MPUS ON THE RADAR
Uwe Westmeyer from Renesas Electronics Europe, presents the company’s new MCU and explores how is has been designed to offer advanced capabilities for a range of radar applications
record in terms of re-write cycles, one of the industry’s fastest random access operation speeds and high reliability. It also offers low power consumption as the transistors are smaller, lowering parasitic capacitances. The process specification of the RH850/V1R-M also meets the most stringent temperature requirements (T-junction 150°C). In addition, the embedded flash provides higher integration using less PCB space, and better real time behaviour.
W
ith the expansion of ADAS and autonomous driving, sensors are
fast becoming a key technology in the automotive world. Vehicles are being equipped with a broad spectrum of them in cameras, radar (radio detection and ranging), lidar (light detection and ranging) and ultrasonic sensors. In particular, radar sensors are required for ADAS applications, including advanced emergency braking and adaptive cruise control. Unlike other sensors, radar sensors are not negatively affected by external environmental limitations which include weather conditions like rain and fog as well as sunshine. High-precision sensing is also critical
for autonomous driving. Here, radar sensors help meet the increasing requirements of range resolution, the detection and separation of objects surrounding the car, and accurate speed measurement. This requires more antennas and higher signal processing performance. To address these requirements, Renesas
Electronics recently launched its first RH850-based, 32-bit, automotive radar microcontroller (MCU) series, the RH850/V1R, which includes the features required for future advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving. The RH850/V1R-M, the first product from the RH850/V1R Series, includes a digital signal processor and high speed serial interfaces and is specifically designed for mid- to long-
18 NOVEMBER 2017 | ELECTRONICS
range radars. This new MCU includes a dual core at 320 megahertz (MHz) with high speed flash of 2MB as well as 2MB internal RAM. It also complies with the most stringent temperature requirements. Renesas also provides software and
tools, including evaluation boards, to enable system developers to help get started with development using its RH850/V1R-M solution. The following is a look at the main
functions in the new MCU and how they support ADAS and autonomous driving.
DSP: HIGH RADAR SIGNAL PROCESSING AND SENSING The RH850/V1R-M MCU has been designed to have optimised hardware acceleration in the DSP. This allows for processing of the raw data into target objects efficiently, and for this to be done separately from the safety-related classification and tracking carried out in the CPUs. The DSP performs radar specific algorithms – including fast Fourier transforms, beamforming, windowing, channel calibration and peak search – all at high speed and with low power consumption. The MCU comes with a DSP maths library, developed by Renesas, which is designed to support system developers in their algorithm development. The RH850/V1R-M has been developed
using Renesas’ 40-nanometer (nm) embedded flash (eFlash) process technology, which has a proven track
Figure 1:
The RH850-based, 32- bit, automotive radar microcontroller (MCU) series from Renesas
HIGH-SPEED DESIGN The new RH850/V1R-M features two G3MH CPU cores operating at 320MHz – these are the highest performance cores in the RH850 family. The G3MH is a superscalar reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture with two seven-stage integer pipelines, which allows the execution of two different instructions at the same time. Each G3MH core achieves the performance of 3.2 DMIPS/MHz. The RH850/V1R-M also includes 2MB high-speed flash based on Renesas’ automotive 40nm embedded flash technology. With its 2MB RAM, this device handles all specific calculations on radar cube data, such as range and velocity FFTs, digital beam forming, constant false alarm rate (CFAR, Note 4) and peak detection. Samples of the device and the DSP
maths library are now available, while mass production is scheduled to begin in November 2018. A complete toolchain with C/C++ compiler, debugger, simulation models and detailed performance profiling tools will also be made available. In a highly competitive market, car
manufacturers are continuously seeking to achieve the highest safety rates for both ADAS and autonomous driving – and this is where reliable radar sensors play a crucial role. Powerful MCUs – like the new Renesas RH850/V1R-M – can help. Designed specifically with these application requirements in mind, they help carmakers increase the efficiency of their radar solutions while accelerating their time to market.
Renesas Electronics Europe
www.renesas.com T: 01628 651 700
/ ELECTRONICS
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