As a non-contact sensing technology, millimeter-wave radar sensors have the advantages of accurate sensing and non-interference, and are now widely used in the field of ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) and autonomous driving. However, with the development of the market, millimeter-wave radar applications are expanding beyond the in-vehicle field to smart cities, building automation, health monitoring and other industries.
Marketsand Markets recently released data showing that by 2023, the total market for millimeter-wave radar sensors will reach $20.6 billion. Automotive radar is the main driver of this wave of growth, but then the IoT market will be another wheel driving the millimeter-wave radar market, propelling it forward at an even higher acceleration.
01, tens of billions of dollars of market prospects
Automotive has been the development of millimeter-wave radar in the civilian field of the important entry point, these years, with the rise of automated driving, the development momentum is very strong, and is now in the L2 or more automated driving system basically become a standard.
However, the application of millimeter wave radar is not limited to automobiles.
According to the introduction of Associate Professor Zhang Hui of the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Wave at Southeast University, smart transportation, smart home, security, rail transportation, drones, etc. are potential markets for the development of millimeter-wave radar, which has already formed a certain scale of the market in the field of smart transportation and security, and the field of smart home is also a foreseeable important potential market.
Take traffic monitoring as an example, many large cities are currently facing the problem of traffic congestion. One way to solve the problem is to have more precise regulation of traffic signals at intersections and on major roads.
4D millimeter wave radar is a multi-lane multi-target tracking device designed specifically for intelligent transportation systems, which can provide accurate 4D multi-target real-time tracking trajectories in X, Y, and Z three-dimensional coordinates and one-dimensional speeds, detecting basic information about the traffic flow such as single-vehicle speeds, average speeds, traffic volumes, lane occupancy, vehicle types, queue lengths, and event analysis.
Integrating 4D millimeter-wave radar on a high-definition video camera allows for simultaneous monitoring of 4 12 lanes and provides high-resolution 4D radar track information for 128 targets, which are synchronized and overlaid on the video. With this information, traffic signals can be adjusted more efficiently and traffic can flow smoothly.
The use cases of millimeter wave radar in the field of smart home are also increasing. As the aging process accelerates, the combination of millimeter wave radar and smart aging has evolved into many new use cases such as fall alarms and sleep monitoring.
For example, Avnet has developed a solution for respiratory heartbeat detection based on the Infineon BGT60TR1X series of millimeter wave radar chips. The solution works with two antennas, one transmitting and one receiving, and the collected data is processed by a low-cost MCU based on the Arm Cortex-M7, which is able to automatically detect and capture subtle movements triggered by respiration and heartbeat over a wide range.
In addition, millimeter-wave radar can detect subtle object movements, such as human gestures, breathing, and heartbeats. Millimeter-wave radar is being used in healthcare to explore additional applications, such as blood pressure monitoring, mood monitoring, and more.
Millimeter-wave radar can track a person's activity without an optical camera and detect people's activities, including movement characteristics such as people falling, without worrying about the privacy issues associated with using a camera.
In summary, millimeter-wave radar has been increasingly used in non-automotive applications due to its high precision, high resolution, and especially the fact that the radar waves are not affected by environmental conditions such as rain, fog, dust, and snow, and that it can be operated all day and all night.
According to Wisdom Research Consulting estimates, China's smart home scale growth rate in the next few years to remain at more than 50%, of which home radar to 2024 is expected to reach 10.5 billion yuan. With the development of millimeter wave technology of China's own technology, it will certainly expand more application scenarios and bring unprecedented convenience to people's lives.
02, "three brothers" each show their ability
If divided according to the working frequency band, millimeter-wave radar for the civilian market is roughly three types - 24GHz millimeter wave radar, 77GHz millimeter wave radar and 60GHz millimeter wave radar. So, which operating frequency band of millimeter wave radar is more suitable for the development of the non-automotive market?
Zhong Qiaohai pointed out that the 24GHz millimeter wave radar is the first millimeter wave radar put into civilian use, its wavelength is 1.25cm (barely millimeter wave). Due to the frequency of the band is relatively low, the bandwidth is relatively narrow (only 250MHz), so the 24GHz millimeter wave radar in the measurement accuracy is subject to certain limitations, which also restricts the expansion of its application. However, due to the mature 24GHz technology and low cost, there is still a lot of room to play.
77GHz band millimeter wave radar wavelength is only 3.9mm, the frequency is relatively high, the bandwidth can be up to 4GHz. generally speaking, the shorter the wavelength of the radar, the higher the resolution/accuracy (of course, the cost will also be higher), and the shape of the whole system will also be smaller. Therefore, 77GHz millimeter wave radar is gradually taking over 24GHz products in the market, becoming the mainstream in the automotive field, and many countries and regions have also allocated this frequency band as a dedicated frequency band for automobiles.
With the maturity of 77GHz millimeter wave radar technology, the cost-effective advantage of 24GHz program in automotive applications is not so significant, these years, 24GHz millimeter wave radar in the automotive market gradually gave way to the 77GHz program, the development of 24GHz millimeter wave radar center of gravity gradually shifted to the industrial and consumer markets.
60GHz millimeter-wave radar has a wavelength of 5mm and a license-free bandwidth of up to 7GHz that can be used for short-range applications, so it can provide better resolution. It has emerged primarily as a response to the problems of 24GHz radar's restricted bandwidth, lack of accuracy, and limitations in sensing objects of application. Because of this, the competition from major technology vendors around millimeter wave radar in the non-automotive space is gradually shifting from 24 GHz to the 60 GHz band.
Zhang Hui also believes that the 60GHz band is expected to become the mainstream of the market for indoor applications such as smart home and health monitoring. 60GHz band is the atmospheric absorption window, very suitable for close proximity, and there are already a number of chips and modules in this band in the commercial stage.
As for the millimeter wave radar in intelligent transportation, due to the high performance requirements in all aspects (such as the detection distance is even as high as 500 meters or more, the detection accuracy and resolution are by high requirements), the corresponding products have been in the 79G 81GHz band development.
It can be said that, with 24GHz radar to play the station, 77GHz radar in the field of automotive breakthroughs, as well as 60GHz radar complementary, millimeter-wave radar "three brothers" has been in the civilian market to break out a new world.
Especially in the non-automotive field, the future performance of millimeter wave radar is very worth looking forward to.
At present, many domestic and foreign mainstream manufacturers are in the 60GHz band for the corresponding product development. Texas Instruments developed a scalable 60GHz single-chip millimeter wave sensor can achieve reliable contactless gesture detection, such as lighting control, media control. Infineon developed 60GHz microwave antenna integrated radar gesture recognition sensors that can be applied directly on top of cell phones or wearable devices. Avnet's use of millimeter-wave radar to achieve non-contact vital signs detection (including breathing and heartbeat) has matured and successfully commercialized. Google has released a 60Ghz millimeter wave radar chip that makes it easier to track and analyze sleep quality.
03, face the technical challenges
Although millimeter-wave radar in the broader civilian field has a very good market performance, but these areas previously have some mature sensing technology in the application of the development, such as infrared, camera and so on. Millimeter-wave radar wants to break out of their original "comfort zone", into the non-vehicle this new market, we have to face the challenge of these technologies.
Dennis Barrett, Product Marketing Manager at TI, pointed out that compared with vision and LiDAR-based sensors, a key advantage of millimeter-wave sensors is that they are not affected by environmental conditions such as rain, dust, smoke, fog or frost.
In smart home applications, for example, millimeter-wave sensors can operate in complete darkness or in direct sunlight.
These sensors can be mounted directly behind plastic housings with no external lenses, vents, or sensor surfaces, and are rugged enough to meet Ingress Protection (IP) 69K standards.
Dennis Barrett emphasized that glass walls and partitions are used a lot in modern buildings, and that vacuum or mopping robots need to sense these surfaces to prevent collisions. It has proven difficult to detect these elements using cameras and infrared sensors. Millimeter wave sensors, however, can detect the presence of glass walls and objects behind them.
In fact, such a property makes millimeter-wave radar useful in industrial manufacturing as well. Vision-based safety systems in dusty manufacturing environments such as textiles or carpet weaving require frequent lens cleaning. Millimeter-wave sensors can detect objects in over-illumination (too low), high humidity, smoke, and dust situations with low processing latency (typically less than 2ms).
However, traditional products such as infrared sensors are not without their advantages, such as cheaper prices, making them still occupy a lot of market space.
In this regard, Sadie Advisor IC Industry Research Center analyst Penghao Lv believes that millimeter-wave radar and infrared sensing, cameras, etc. is not a mutual replacement of the relationship between each other, is to complement each other, with each other, to play their respective strengths *** with the service for intelligent life. Infrared sensors are affected by temperature, ultrasonic radar's role is close to the distance, low measurement accuracy, can not detect small targets. In many application scenarios, millimeter wave radar can make up for the shortcomings of these technologies, but also be able to determine the direction, speed and distance of moving objects with high precision, and can detect the movement of fine objects.
In the future, with the rising demand for sensor accuracy in the market, the demand for millimeter-wave sensors is bound to increase, and the related industrial chain will become more mature, with a price plus pro-people. Millimeter wave radar in the field of non-vehicle development will achieve more rapid development.