Tesla Files to use new millimeter-wave radar on FSD cars.

MEDICALJMP

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Tesla files to use new ‘millimeter-wave radar’ on its ‘full self-driving’ electric cars
Fred Lambert
- Jan. 13th 2021 4:16 pm ET

@FredericLambert

TESLA

Tesla Cybertruck Tesla Files to use new millimeter-wave radar on FSD cars. Tesla-Autopilot-Radar-e1603395743425

Tesla has applied with the FCC for the use of a new “millimeter-wave radar” for Autopilot and Full Self-Driving in its electric cars.


New Tesla Radar
Tesla uses a front-facing radar sensor hidden inside the front fascia of its vehicles as part of its Autopilot/Full Self-Driving (FSD) sensor suite.
Electrek has found a new FCC filing from Tesla in which the automaker applied to get a new “Vehicle Millimeter-wave Radar Sensor” for use on public roads:
“The equipment under test (EUT) was an Vehicle Millimeter-wave Radar Sensor operating in 60 GHz band (60-64 GHz).”


Tesla applied for confidentiality for the new device, and therefore, we won’t have more information and pictures until the confidentiality agreement is up in July 2021.

We recently reported on Tesla looking to add a new “4D” radar with twice the range of its previous radar.
Here’s the test report from Tesla’s FCC application for the new radar sensor:

https://html2-f.scribdassets.com/5ree7sd5ts8d3cca/images/1-4757123de3.jpg

Tesla Loves Cameras and Radar, Hates Lidar

Early on its Autopilot and self-driving effort, Tesla made a clear decision to bet on computer vision powered by camera and complemented with radar.
CEO Elon Musk famously hates the use of lidar sensors for autonomous driving systems.

Yesterday, he even told an analyst that Tesla wouldn’t use lidar sensors. Early ones were known to be expensive but have come down in price in recent years, even if they were free:
I mean totally free, well, I think even if it was free, we wouldn’t put it on.
Instead, Tesla is using eight surround cameras around its vehicles complemented by 12 ultrasonic sensors and a front-facing radar.


Tesla Cybertruck Tesla Files to use new millimeter-wave radar on FSD cars. Tesla-Autopilot-sensors


All Tesla vehicles since 2016 have been equipped with this suite of sensors or at least similar versions of it, as some hardware updates have been introduced over the years.
Now it looks like Tesla is preparing to introduce a new radar to the sensor suite in order to improve its effort to enable full self-driving inside its vehicles.

—————————————-
https://electrek.co/2021/01/13/tesla-millimeter-wave-radar-electric-cars/



Interesting technical news. FSD gets closer to reality.
Sponsored

 

Jhodgesatmb

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They've made upgrade packs before.

-Crissa
I would like to think that I purchased a contract for features and hardware, so if Tesla changes the hardware or software to support better FSD I get it gratis without question or arguing.
 

Crissa

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MEDICALJMP

MEDICALJMP

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They are upgrading microprocessor chips for FSD, I can see them adding this as well.
 

59sjordan

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I know they are upgrading older cars with the new hardware and always updating software, but, I am starting to get a little worried that they may never actually achieve FSD. Elon has been saying for years now that with this upgrade (hardware, software, whatever the occasion) FSD will be here by the end of the year. - paraphrasing

Honestly, do they even have it figured out?

FSD is one of the big selling points to me.
 
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MEDICALJMP

MEDICALJMP

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If you look at any of the videos of FSD beta testers it is pretty amazing what these cars are doing. Perfect? Not yet. What is your definition of perfection? 100% - no mistakes ever? I will say that is impossible. 99%? 99.5%? 99.99%? How many trailing 9s are you going to demand? Is it just urban driving or you looking for FSD to take you home if it is way off road on some Jeep trail in the Rockies?

Crystal balls are impracticality rare. I will crawl way out on a limb and predict that practical working FSD will be available by 2023. I am not saying that government regulations will allow it, just that it will be working and you could forgo being in the literal driver’s seat if you wanted to.

With what Tesla is accomplishing right now, before super computer DOJO and AI are incorporated, what I see on YouTube is ahead of what I expected in 2030.

This is just the rankings of someone outside the industry — with no special AI, EE, coding education — who has read a great deal of the news and information of this subject over the years. I’m betting my very hard earned money on it.
 

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Somewhat related I guess



Testing The D-band For 6G And Car Radar


Tesla Cybertruck Tesla Files to use new millimeter-wave radar on FSD cars. shutterstock_1383836651

Rohde & Schwarz and IHP carry out the industry’s first full 2D/3D antenna characterisation of transceiver modules operating from 110 to 170GHz

Wireless comms test expert Rohde & Schwarz, in collaboration with the research facility IHP GmbH (Innovations for High Performance Microelectronics), has performed the industry's first full 2D/3D antenna characterisation of transceiver modules operating in the D-Band.

The D-Band, ranging from 110 GHz to 170 GHz, is a candidate for beyond 5G and 6G mobile communications as well as for future automotive radar applications. But D-band antenna systems and RF transceiver modules share features that make their testing a challenge. Their wide frequency range, a greater number of antenna elements and the lack of conventional external RF connectors will demand testing over-the-air in a shielded environment.

Rohde & Schwarz and IHP have transferred their current 5G test methods into the sub-THz range. The test setup consists of the R&S ATS1000 antenna test system, the R&S ZNA43 vector network analyzer and the R&S AMS32 antenna measurement software from Rohde & Schwarz.

The R&S ATS1000 antenna test system is a compact and mobile shielded chamber solution for OTA and antenna measurements, ideal for 5G mmWave applications. To cover the D-Band frequencies, extensions from Radiometer Physics GmbH, a Rohde & Schwarz company, are used in the setup, which allow direct frequency conversion at the probe in both transmit and receive directions. No mechanical modifications or additional RF cabling to the antenna test system is necessary.

The setup can measure the amplitude and phase coherent response of a DUT radiating in the D-Band. Fully automated 3D-pattern measurements including post-processing can be performed in short time thanks to the R&S AMS32 software options for nearfield to farfield transformation and the highly accurate precision positioner.

IHP provided four different devices under test (DUT), based on the same D-Band radar transceiver chipset but with different antenna structures, including on-chip single and stacked patches with air trenches and an on-chip antenna array. The over-the-air characterisation verified the wider bandwidth provided by the stacked patches than that by the single patch.

The performance of the various DUTs was characterised by spherical measurements, using two different setups. By increasing the angular theta step-size from 1 degree to 5 degree, the total test times for a DUT could be reduced from 70 minutes to 12 minutes. By comparing the different DUT designs based on the obtained measurement data, researchers of IHP were able to analyze the effect of the finite on-board reflector area on the radar sensor FoV (field-of-view).

Gerhard Kahmen, managing director of IHP, says: “Sub-THz frequency systems are getting more and more attention in research and many fields of application. The Rohde & Schwarz OTA test system, extended to D-Band, provides an excellent way to characterise radiation patterns of the complex antenna structures, realised in our D-Band radar chips, in a time efficient and precise way.

For IHP, these measurements are valuable to understand the physics of the antenna structures and to further improve their performance. The very successful cooperation with an industrial partner leading in the field of wireless and mmWave communication shows the benefit of close interaction between research and application.”

Alexander Pabst, VP of systems and projects at Rohde & Schwarz says: “We are excited to work with such an excellent partner as Innovations for High Performance Microelectronics on advancing our industry-leading test solutions for over-the-air testing. These joint efforts will help researchers and key industry players to test and characterise antenna systems and transceiver modules for future automotive radar applications and wireless communication standard, that we eventually call 6G.”


SOURCE: CompoundSemiconductor
 

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I wonder what this means to current Tesla owners and FSD for them?
What it means is higher resolution in space and time. Thus the computer to which this sensor is attached will have a more realistic (accurate) picture of the environment around the car and how it is changing. It means that LIDAR's advantages relative to radar are diminished.
 


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Here is a good reference for mmWave radar if you want to know a little more about it and how it works from Texas Instruments.

Link The fundamentals of millimeter wave sensors

Introduction

Millimeter wave (mmWave) is a special class of radar technology that uses short- wavelength electromagnetic waves. Radar systems transmit electromagnetic wave signals that objects in their path then reflect. By capturing the reflected signal, a radar system can determine the range, velocity and angle of the objects.

mmWave radars transmit signals with a wavelength that is in the millimeter range. This is considered a short wavelength in the electromagnetic spectrum and is one of the advantages of this technology. Indeed, the size of system components such as the antennas required to process mmWave signals is small. Another advantage of short wavelengths is the high accuracy. An mmWave system operating at 76–81 GHz (with a corresponding wavelength of about 4 mm), will have the ability to detect movements that are as small as a fraction of a millimeter.

A complete mmWave radar system includes transmit (TX) and receive (RX) radio frequency (RF) components; analog components such as clocking; and digital components such as analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), microcontrollers (MCUs) and digital signal processors (DSPs).

Traditionally, these systems were implemented with discrete components, which increased power consumption and overall system cost. System design is challenging due the complexity and high frequencies.

Texas Instruments (TI) has solved these challenges and designed complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-based mmWave radar devices that integrate TX- RF and RX-RF analog components such as clocking, and digital components such as the ADC, MCU and hardware accelerator. Some families in TI’s mmWave sensor portfolio integrate a DSP for additional signal-processing capabilities.

TI devices implement a special class of mmWave technology called frequency- modulated continuous wave (FMCW). As the name implies, FMCW radars transmit a frequency-modulated signal continuously in order to measure range as well as angle and velocity. This differs from traditional pulsed-radar systems, which transmit short pulses periodically.

Range measurement

The fundamental concept in radar systems is the
transmission of an electromagnetic signal that
objects reflect in its path. In the signal used in
FMCW radars, the frequency increases linearly
with time. This type of signal is also called a chirp.
 

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Flat screen TV was for many years always just 5-10 years away. Then it finally became practical.

There are things that we know we can do, but we don't have a good handle on just how difficult they are in the real world. They can be like that.
 

ajdelange

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These technologies evolve. Darlington first conceived of chirped radar just after WWII by looking at some of the transformations the quantum physicists were playing with. The first chirped signals were produced in the lab (by my father and others) in 1950 (I think it was) and by 1960 the technique was in fairly common use. By 1967 the Navy was developing (TI was involved) the AN/APS 116 , an X-band periscope detection radar that decompressed the pulses with a "Folded Taper Meander Line" i.e. a passive filter. Not too long after that digital signal processing came along and it became possible to use much more sophisticated modulations on the pulses than just a linear frequency sweep and from there it was new components that have us now at 60 GHz in something that would probably be a couple of inches square. So some 70 years of evolution. But steady evolution.
 

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I know they are upgrading older cars with the new hardware and always updating software, but, I am starting to get a little worried that they may never actually achieve FSD. Elon has been saying for years now that with this upgrade (hardware, software, whatever the occasion) FSD will be here by the end of the year. - paraphrasing

Honestly, do they even have it figured out?

FSD is one of the big selling points to me.
How many YouTube videos have you seen with people who have the beta and don't even need to do anything from work to their home and back? I have seen several and it looks like all they need to do is decide how the rollout is going to happen and go from there
 
 




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