Single-chip, 76GHz to 81GHz industrial high-performance radar with integrated DSP, MCU and ethernet

The IWR2944 is a

single-chip mmWave sensor composed of a FMCW transceiver, capable of operation in

the 76 to 81GHz band, radar data processing elements, and peripherals for in-vehicle

networking. The IWR2944 is built with TI’s low-power 45nm RFCMOS

process and enables unprecedented levels of integration in a small form factor and

minimal BOM. The IWR2944 is a device for low-power,

self-monitored, ultra-accurate radar systems in the industrial space.

TI’s low-power 45nm RFCMOS process enables a

monolithic implementation of a 4

TX, 4 RX system with

integrated PLL, VCO, mixer, and baseband ADC. Integrated in the DSP subsystem (DSS),

is TI’s high-performance C66x DSP for radar signal processing. The device includes a

Radio Processor Subsystem (RSS), which is responsible for radar front-end

configuration, control, and calibration. Within the Main Subsystem (MSS), the device

implements a user-programmable Arm Cortex-R5F processor allowing for custom control

and industrial interface

applications. The hardware accelerator block (HWA 2.1) supplements the DSS and MSS

by offloading common radar processing such as FFT, constant false alarm rate (CFAR),

scaling, and compression. This saves MIPS on the DSS and MSS, opening up resources

for custom applications and higher-level algorithms.

A Hardware Security Module (HSM) is also provisioned in the device (available for only secure part variants). The HSM consists of a programmable Arm Cortex-M4 core and the necessary infrastructure to provide a secure zone of operation within the device.

Simple programming model changes can enable a wide variety of sensor implementation (Short, Mid, Long) with the possibility of dynamic reconfiguration for implementing a multimode sensor.

Additionally, the IWR2944 is provided as a complete platform solution including TI hardware and software reference designs, software drivers, sample configurations, API guides, and user documentation.