Dec 18, 2019   SOURCE: BusinessWire

Infineon and Oculii Partner to Accelerate Imaging Radar Software Technology Solutions in Automotive Applications

Radar is a fundamental building block for both current and future automated driving applications. These radar sensors are used in distance warning and automatic emergency braking systems, thus make driving safer. Radar sensors will be part of the standard equipment of every new car in the future. Among other things, they are required for autonomous driving. With more than 100 million 77 GHz radar chips sold, Infineon is the technology and world market leader in this segment. The aim of the collaboration is to develop this safety technology further.

Traditional radar architectures require more physical antennas in order to deliver higher angular resolution, but additional antennas translate into higher cost, size, and power. Oculii's proprietary Virtual Aperture Imaging radar software increases the angular resolution of an array through sophisticated software as opposed to more physical transceiver elements. Oculii's software technique is an array multiplier - enabling a MIMO radar sensor to achieve a 10X+ increase in angular resolution, delivering sub-degree angular with existing mass manufactured automotive-grade silicon.

Oculii and Infineon are collaborating on radar software solutions that scale performance for cost-effective single chip solutions tailored for Level 1 ADAS, all the way to multi-chip high performance solutions tailored for Level 4 Autonomous Driving. This partnership will enable automotive OEMs and Tier-1 customers to leverage Infineon’s best in class chipset containing AURIX™ MCUs, MMIC and power supply hardware platform along with Oculii’s Virtual Aperture Imaging software to deliver high-resolution performance at an attractive price point.

“This partnership is another step by Infineon to leverage advanced software solutions around our best in class 77 GHz radar portfolio,” said Ritesh Tyagi, Head of the Automotive Silicon Valley Innovation Center at Infineon. “Oculii’s Virtual Aperture Imaging technology combined with Infineon’s existing mass manufactured automotive grade radar solutions enables an increase in angular resolution without the need for multiple active transceivers or expensive antenna technologies.”

“Infineon is the technology and world market leader in radar silicon, and we have been working closely with them to integrate our Virtual Aperture Software to further improve the angular resolution and performance of their market leading radar solutions,” said Oculii’s CEO, Steven Hong, PhD. “Our team has demonstrated that our software architecture can improve angular resolution and field of view by an order of magnitude. We are looking forward to collaborating with Infineon to bring this technology to the broader automotive market.”

The Virtual Aperture Imaging radar software with Infineon’s AURIX hardware will be demonstrated at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the Westgate Pavilion booth #1700 from January 7-10 in Las Vegas, NV.

About Oculii

Oculii is developing high resolution imaging radars to enable the next generation of autonomous systems. Oculii's proprietary Virtual Aperture Imaging radar software increases the angular resolution of any array through a phase encoded modulation scheme that enables a sensor to achieve higher resolution with more compute/memory as opposed to more physical transceiver elements. Backed by some of the top investors and corporations from Silicon Valley, Oculii is working with the leaders in Self Driving Vehicles, Robotics, and Drones - helping them deliver on an autonomous future with an advanced, robust, affordable perception platform.