Seeking to carve out a presence in the automotive radar market, semiconductor supplier Renesas Electronics Corporatiorecently signed a definitive agreement to acquire Steradian Semiconductors Private Ltd., a fabless semiconductor company based in Bengaluru, India that provides 4D imaging radar solutions.  The all-cash acquisition is expected to close by the end of 2022.

According to Renesas, the acquisition of Steradian's radar technology gives the semiconductor supplier a stronger presence in the radar market and boosts its automotive and industrial sensing solution offerings. 

With advancements of ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) in the automotive market, automotive sensor fusion demand is growing to allow precise and accurate object detection of vehicles’ surroundings by combining data from multiple sensors, such as cameras, radar, and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). Radar accurately detects objects over long distances, day or night, even during harsh weather or other adverse environmental conditions. Because radar is considered an essential sensing technology for ADAS, the number of radar sensors installed in vehicles is expected to substantially increaes over the next five years, prompting Renesas to expand its automotive product portfolio with Steradian’s radar technology. 

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“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 statement.  “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 to drive our mid- to long-term business growth in both segments.”

Founded in 2016 as a start-up company, Steradian has extensive expertise in radar technology. Operating in the 76-81 GHz band, Steradian’s powerful 4D radar transceivers offer a high level of integration in a small form factor and high power efficiency. Renesas will leverage Steradian's design assets and expertise to develop automotive radar products, with plans to start sample shipments by the end of 2022. The company aims to develop complete automotive radar solutions that combine ADAS SoCs (System-on-Chips) for processing radar signals, power management ICs (PMICs), and timing products together with software for object recognition. These solutions will simplify the design of automotive radar systems and help speed product development. 

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Renesas and Steradian have been collaborating since 2018, mainly in industrial applications. Steradian's radar technology is expected to be adopted in home security systems such as surveillance, traffic monitoring for people, cars and motorcycles, HMI (Human-Machine Interface) systems such as gesture recognition and docking systems in airport terminals. Steradian provides targeted solutions for these applications by offering transceiver ICs, turnkey modules that include antennas, and software stacks for object recognition. 

Spencer Chin is a Senior Editor for Design News covering the electronics beat. He has many years of experience covering developments in components, semiconductors, subsystems, power, and other facets of electronics from both a business/supply-chain and technology perspective. He can be reached at [email protected].