Infineon Technologies and Imec are to cooperate on CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) sensor chip development.
Based on the agreement unveiled at the annual Imec Technology Forum in Brussels, Infineon and Imec are working on integrated CMOS-based 79 GHz sensor chips for automotive radar applications.
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Imec contributes its knowledge in high-frequency system, circuit and antenna design for radar applications in tandem with Infineon’s radar sensor chip competency.
As a step towards the fully automated car, the development of a first demonstrator in 28 nm CMOS technology is under way. Infineon and Imec expect functional CMOS sensor chip samples in the third quarter of 2016, while a complete radar system demonstrator is scheduled for the beginning of 2017.
Typically, there are up to three radar systems in today’s vehicle equipped with driver assistance functions. In the future, with fully-automated cars, up to ten radar systems and ten more sensor systems using camera or lidar technologies may potentially be used.
“Infineon enables the radar-based safety cocoon of the partly and fully-automated car,” said Infineon Technologies VP & general manager, Sense & Control, Ralf Bornefeld.
“In the future, we will manufacture radar sensor chips as a single-chip solution in a CMOS process for applications like automated parking.”
