The goal of the radar4FAD project is to develop a powerful, highly flexible, cost-efficient, fail-operational and highly user-friendly radar module for all types of radar applications in the field of highly automated driving.
When transitioning from fail-safe assistance systems to highly automated fail-operational driving systems, everything has to be evaluated: technology, components, modules, system and architecture. The requirements for radar sensors with regard to detection sensitivity, location, angle and velocity resolution, robustness against interfering signals and failure safety increase considerably and can be covered only partially with today's system approaches. In some cases, radical new approaches have to be developed and tested:

• More efficient modulation methods (OFDM, PM, CDM, ...)
• Parallel working MIMO concepts
• Adaptive digital 'smart' beamforming algorithms
• More efficient signal processing
• More effective use of usable bandwidth in the 76-81 GHz band

radar4FAD is based on the latest state-of-the-art technology and continues to explore the radar sensor technology based on the above-mentioned solutions in a focused way from a gap analysis. The conceptual evaluation is to be carried out on the basis of a modular radar sensor array which is to be developed and ideally allows the implementation and variation of different system concepts on the basis of the same hardware components (RF ICs, baseband electronics, antenna arrays, etc.). A detailed specification of the functional and non-functional requirements resulting from the highly automated and fully automated operation enables a sustainable concept for a flexible and modular radar module. The key to this is the Software Defined Radar (SDR) approach, which means that the highly integrated module will provide the necessary degree of freedom to develop and test software-controlled new and relevant methodological approaches of modulation and evaluation methods. The radar modules have to be designed in terms of performance, space, weight and reliability in a way that they can later be converted into cost-optimized, competitive products that can meet all the automotive quality requirements and the safety requirements of autonomous driving.

In the consortium, leading players in the field of radar technology like BOSCH, Infineon, Daimler, IMST, Uni Ulm, KIT, Ruhr Uni Bochum, FhG ENAS, FHR, CWM and IHP have joined forces to provide a semiconductor-based radar module. Afterwards this module is to be developed further into a product to meet the growing demand for powerful and flexible radar modules economically.