ON Semiconductor Acquires Israeli Radar Technology for Automotive Sensing

7 March, 2017

ON Semiconductor acquires mmWave technology for automotive radar from IBM center in Haifa, Israel. The IBM team of 15 E-band experts joins the ON Semi's Image Sensor Group

ON Semiconductor Corporation (Nasdaq: ON) today announced that it is acquiring and licensing mmWave technology for automotive radar applications developed by IBM’s Haifa, Israel research team. The acquisition expands ON Semiconductor offer to automotive sensing market and ads radar sensors in addition to its image sensors line. Radar is highly complementary to sensing cameras as it excels at measuring distance and object velocity even in poor visibility. The company said that the combination of these technologies “enables ON Semiconductor to address the growing trend of sensor fusion where multiple sensing technologies are used to improve accuracy and automotive safety.”

Next-generation ADAS and Autonomous Sriving Solutions

Techtime has learned from sources close to the deal. that the IBM team of 15 mmWave experts, will join ON Semi to form its new development center in Haifa. It will be the first research activity of ON Semi in Israel. “The team and its technologies accelerates ON Semiconductor’s strategy to grow our automotive sensing business even faster than the robust growth from increasing camera attach rates,” said Taner Ozcelik, senior vice president and general manager Image Sensor Group. “We look forward to delivering a wider range of sensing products for next-generation ADAS and fully autonomous driving solutions.”

The acquisition creates a new Israel design center for ON Semiconductor that reports directly into the automotive solutions division within the Image Sensor Group. The new design center is located in Haifa, Israel. It includes staff, equipment, research facilities and intellectual property. The team’s Eband designs meet the stringent European ETSI standard and include high output power for a Fixed Beam Silicon based chipset.

A Single Chip Solution

During its operation in IBM, the team has developed a low-cost, high-throughput wireless transceiver. The focus is on a single chip solution with a high level of integration (RF-to-baseband including ADC on a single chip) for a short range (less than one meter) wireless transceiver in the unlicensed 60GHz ISM Band. Based on IBM’s CMOS technology and know-how, an efficient integrated receiver is being developed with an emphasis on ultra-low power (less than 150 mW) and low-cost RF and baseband components.

In the long term, it is envisioned that this product will migrate to high-end mobile phone devices and health care applications such as portable MRI, CT-SCAN, and digital imaging enabled tablets, which will expand the market tremendously. The technical challenge for this 60GHz radio is to be capable of transfer rates up to 1.5 Gbps over a range of 1 meter while limiting the power consumption to less than 150 mW.

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Posted in: Automotive , News , Semiconductors , Wireless