Steradian’s radar solutions could help Renesas become a bigger player in ADAS.
Japanese semiconductor company Renesas is acquiring India’s Steradian Semiconductors, the company announced earlier this month. Steradian is a fabless semiconductor company based in Bengaluru that provides 4D imaging radar solutions.
The acquisition will allow Renesas—which formed when Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and NEC merged their semiconductor businesses into one company—to expand its footprint in the radar market and enhance its automotive and industrial sensing solutions.
The move will also position Renesas to compete in the rapidly growing field of automated driver assistance systems (ADAS), which has seen a significant uptick in demand for sensors that enable autonomous or semiautonomous driving.
These sensors must enable rapid, detailed and accurate object detection all around the vehicle—while it is in motion—in harsh weather, in darkness and in other difficult driving conditions. They must combine data from a variety of sensors, including cameras, LiDAR and radar.
Steradian’s small form factor radar transceivers operate in the 76-81 GHz band. Fabless companies like Steradian design and market their own hardware—and often hold the intellectual property for the technologies they sell—but outsource the manufacturing to other companies. Other examples include Apple and Qualcomm.
Renesas says that radar in particular is a vital sensing technology for ADAS to function, as it can handle adverse weather conditions, has a long detection range and provides good resolution and position estimation.
Using Steradian’s design assets and radar expertise, Renesas will develop automotive radar technologies that combine ADAS system-on-chips for radar signal processing, power management integrated circuits and timing products—technologies that will be paired with object recognition software. Renesas’ intent is to simplify the design of automotive radar systems, which could contribute to faster development of radar products.
Renesas expects the number of vehicles with radar systems to triple over the next half decade. By acquiring Steradian, which it has collaborated with on industrial applications since 2018, Renesas has taken a big step toward meeting that demand.
“Radar is an indispensable technology for ADAS, which uses a complex combination of various sensors,” said Hidetoshi Shibata, president and CEO of Renesas, in a company press release. “The addition of Steradian’s superb radar technology and engineering talent will allow us to extend our leadership in the automotive segments. We will also leverage their technology for industrial applications.”
Through its acquisition by Renesas, Steradian’s radar technology could find its way into home security and surveillance systems, traffic monitoring, human-machine interface systems and airport terminal docking systems in the form of transceiver integrated circuits, turnkey modules that include radar antennas, and object recognition software stacks.
The all-cash transaction is expected to close by the end of 2022.