Driving towards 2020: Automotive radar technology trends

In the last few years automotive radar has been transformed from being a niche sensor to becoming standard even in middle-class cars. With Euro-NCAP ratings now requiring automated braking and pedestrian safety functionality, radar is often identified as the best suited sensor for this purpose. Additionally, future automated driving will require detailed and highly reliable information on the environment and surrounding street traffic. This requires radar sensors to provide more detailed information about the environment, foremost in the spatial domain. Automotive radar has always benefited significantly from technological advances, especially in semiconductor technology and packaging, allowing a better performance and much more functionality in the radar frontend. A second key area is the antenna system, where new concepts to acquire more information about signals reflected from the environment can significantly improve resolution and detection performance.