Texas Instruments IWR2944 mmWave Radar Sensor
Texas Instruments IWR2944 mmWave Radar Sensor is a single-chip mmWave sensor composed of an FMCW transceiver, radar data processing elements, capable of operation in the 76 to 81GHz band, and peripherals for in-vehicle networking. The IWR2944 is built with a low-power TI 45nm RFCMOS process and enables unprecedented levels of integration in a minimal BOM and small form factor. The IWR2944 is a device for low-power, self-monitored, ultra-accurate radar systems in the industrial space.
The low-power TI 45nm RFCMOS process enables a monolithic implementation of a 4 TX, 4 RX system with an integrated VCO, PLL, mixer, and baseband ADC. Integrated into the DSP subsystem (DSS) is a high-performance TI C66x DSP for radar signal processing. The device includes a Radio Processor Subsystem (RSS) for control, radar front-end configuration, and calibration. The device uses a user-programmable Arm® Cortex-R5F processor in the Main Subsystem (MSS), allowing for custom control and industrial interface applications. The hardware accelerator block (HWA 2.1) supplements the MSS and DSS by offloading common radar processing such as constant false alarm rate (CFAR), FFT, scaling, and compression. This feature saves MIPS on the MSS and DSS, opening up resources for custom applications and higher-level algorithms.
The device also includes a Hardware Security Module (HSM) (only available for secure part variants). The HSM consists of a programmable Arm Cortex-M4 core and infrastructure needed to provide a secure zone of operation within the device.
Features
- FMCW transceiver
- Integrated PLL, transmitter, receiver, baseband, and ADC
- 76GHz to 81GHz coverage with over 4.5GHz continuous bandwidth
- Four receive, and four transmit channels for PCB interface to antennas
- Per transmit phase shifter
- Ultra-accurate chirp engine based on fractional-N PLL
- TX power
- 13.5dBm
- RX noise figure
- 12dBm
- Phase noise at 1MHz
- -96dBc/Hz (76GHz to 77GHz)
- -95dBc/Hz (76GHz to 81GHz)
- Built-in calibration and self-test
- Built-in firmware (ROM)
- Self-calibrating system across process and temperature
- Processing elements
- Arm Cortex-R5F core (supports lock step operation) @ 300MHz
- TI digital signal processor C66x @ 360MHz
- TI radar hardware accelerator (HWA2.1) for operations like FFT, log magnitude, and memory compression
- Multiple EDMA instances for data movement
- Host interface
- 2x CAN-FD
- 10/100Mbps RGMII/RMII/MII Ethernet
- Supports a serial flash memory interface (loading user application from QSPI flash memory)
- Other interfaces available to user application
- Up to nine ADC channels
- Two SPIs
- Four UARTs
- I2C
- GPIOs
- Three EPWMs
- 4-lane Aurora LVDS interface for raw ADC data and debug instrumentation
- CSI2 Rx interface to enable playback of the captured data
- On-chip RAM
- 4MBytes of on-chip RAM
- Memory space split between DSP, MCU, and shared L3
- Device security (on select part numbers)
- Programmable embedded hardware security module (HSM)
- Secure authenticated and encrypted boot support
- Customer programmable root keys, symmetric keys (256 bit), asymmetric keys (up to RSA-4K or ECC-512) with key revocation capability
- Cryptographic hardware accelerators: PKA with ECC, AES (up to 256 bit), SHA (up to 512 bit), TRNG/DRBG
- Functional safety compliant targeted
- Developed for functional safety applications
- Documentation will be available to aid ISO 26262 functional safety system design
- Hardware integrity up to SIL-2 targeted
- Advanced features
- Embedded self-monitoring with no external processor involvement
- Embedded interference detection capability
- Power management
- On-die LDO network for enhanced PSRR
- LVCMOS IO supports dual voltage 3.3V and 1.8V
- Clock source
- 40MHz crystal with an internal oscillator
- Supports external oscillator at 40MHz
- Supports externally driven clock (square or sine wave) at 40MHz
- Effective Power Management
- Recommended LP87745 Power Management ICs (PMIC)
- Companion PMIC is specially designed to meet device power supply requirements
- Flexible mapping and factory-programmed configurations to support different use cases
- Recommended LP87745 Power Management ICs (PMIC)
- Cost-reduced hardware design
- 0.65mm pitch, 12mm×12mm flip chip BGA package for easy assembly and low-cost PCB design
- Small solution size
- Supports wide temperature operating range
- -40°C to 125°C operating junction temperature range
Applications
- Industrial transportation
- Traffic monitoring
- Parking barriers
- Factory automation
Functional Block Diagram
