ADASAutonomous Vehicle

Xilinx and Continental collaborate to create 4D Imaging Radar for autonomous driving

Xilinx, Inc. and Continental announced that Xilinx will power Continental’s new Advanced Radar Sensor (ARS) 540 with the Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC platform, creating the automotive industry’s first production-ready 4D imaging radar. The collaboration enables newly-produced vehicles equipped with the ARS540 to realize SAE J3016 Level 2 functionalities and will pave the way toward Level 5 autonomous driving systems.

4D imaging radar determines an object’s location in range, azimuth, elevation, and relative speed to provide detailed information about the driving environment not provided by earlier automotive radar systems that capture only speed and azimuth. Continental’s ARS540 is a premium, long-range 4D imaging radar with high resolution and 300-meter range. Its wide, ± 60° field-of-view enables multi-hypothesis tracking for precise prediction while driving, which is critical for managing complex driving scenarios, such as the detection of a traffic jam under a bridge. In addition, the ARS540 system’s high horizontal and vertical resolution enables detection of potentially hazardous objects on the road and responds appropriately. By supporting SAE Level 2 where the human driver is responsible for supervising vehicle control, and extending to fully autonomous Level 5, the ARS540 showcases the scalable usage of the sensor.

The Xilinx Automotive (XA) Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC is an adaptable platform that allows Continental’s 4D imaging radar to be agnostic to multiple sensor-platform configurations and adapt to OEM specification. Parallel processing within the device’s programmable logic delivers optimal performance and enables the fully independent, yet simultaneous processing pipelines that are critical to the ARS540’s 4D sensing. The many digital signal processing (DSP) slices enable hardware acceleration of real-time radar sensor inputs.

“We are extremely pleased to be powering the industry’s first production-ready 4D imaging radar. The sophisticated features in Continental’s ARS540 accelerate the wider adoption of autonomous driving by bringing this advanced technology into passenger-owned vehicles. The combination of Continental’s heritage in radar and Xilinx’s legacy in adaptable silicon make this a very powerful offering.”

Willard Tu, senior director of automotive, Xilinx.

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