Validation of FMCW Radar Transceiver

Abstract

Validation involves the correctness of the functionality, several constraints related to performance and the power adherence along with tolerance for security assistance, robustness against several glitches etc. Post silicon validation is a bottleneckin SoC design methodology. It is not possible to detect all design flaws using verification and hence, validation makes use of fabricated, pre-production silicon for the same. The objective here is to ensure the proper workingof the silicon design, to identify andfix errors, that weren’t considered during pre-silicon validation. The driver assistance systems make the use of radar sensors in various counts and configurations. The data collected and provided by the radar sensors are used in several applications such as blind-spot detection, adaptive cruise control, autonomous emergency braking etc. All of this is done to increase the safety by enabling vehicles to identify the potentially dangerous situations and further avoid them. Radar systems in conjunction with sensor systems, definitely contribute to increasing the automation levels right up to the completely autonomous vehicle. And thus, the validation of this entire SoC safety architecture, partitioning of hardware functions and faults as per the relevant failure modes is essential and hence the FMEDA automation comes across. Thus, the failure prediction methods are becoming more and more efficient with the passage of time for the enhancement of such systems. The effectiveness of such methods can be significantly enhanced when combined with fault injection. By doing so, not only failures can be predicted but also potential root causes can be identified based on symptoms, which can be observed at runtime on the system. Thus, with this approach, the forthcoming error root causes can be effectively identified, which in turn will enable effective recovery or failure avoidance.