Automotive radar sensors offer outstanding levels of integration

Mouser now stocks the AWR1843AOP automotive radar sensor from Texas Instruments. The sensor offers engineers excellent levels of integration in an exceptionally small form factor for low-power, self-monitored, ultra-accurate automotive radar systems.

The sensor is an Antenna-On-Package (AOP) device for operations in the 76GHz to 81GHz band. Built with the company's low-power 45nm RFCMOS process, it combines a DSP subsystem, integrating high-performance C674x DSP for radar signal processing, with a BIST processor subsystem, responsible for radio configuration, calibration and control, with a user-programmable Arm Cortex-R4F processor for automotive interfacing.

The sensor's hardware accelerator block (HWA) can achieve radar processing and offloads of the DSP to execute higher-level algorithms. Simple programming model changes allow various sensor applications, such as door opening, parking, blind spot, and lane change applications, with dynamic reconfiguration for implementing a multimode sensor. Further, the device is offered as a complete platform solution, including reference hardware design, software drivers, sample configurations, API guide, and user documentation.

The company's AWR1843AOPEVM evaluation module supports the sensor. The module is a simple-to-use platform for evaluating the AWR1843AOP radar sensor. It allows direct connectivity to the MMWAVEICBOOST and DCA1000EVM development kits (sold separately), allowing designers to create software for the on-chip C67x DSP core and low-power Arm Cortex-R4F processors.