The AWR294x 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 AWR294x 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 AWR294x is a device for low-power, self-monitored, ultra-accurate radar systems in the automotive space.

TI’s low-power 45nm RFCMOS process enables a monolithic implementation of a 3-4 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 automotive 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.Read more