Panasonic Develops High Precision, Wide Field of View Millimeter-Wave Radar Technology

Panasonic Corporation (TOKYO:6752) today announced it has developed high precision, wide field of view millimeter-wave technologies, that are able to separately detect cars, pedestrians and bicycles in less than 0.1 seconds, on the condition that they are separated by 20cm. These technologies will be applied to 79GHz radar, and utilized in detection sensors to avoid accidents occurring at intersections, accelerating the adoption of advanced safety support systems.

Millimeter-wave radar is capable of detecting pedestrians and vehicles in night time and bad weather conditions. Panasonic’s new technologies have improved the detection accuracy of the radar, so that it can separately detect cars, bicycles and pedestrians that are separated by a distance of 20cm at a speed of less than 0.1 seconds. These technologies also allow the operation of multiple millimeter radars, enables for a wider field of view (FOV) system. These features offer greater flexibility for installation at intersections.

Panasonic’s new millimeter wave radar technology has the following distinctive features:
- By applying unique coding technologies to millimeter-wave radar in order to attain rapid scanning and detection in a data cycle of less than 0.1 seconds, it is enable to detect vehicles, bicycles, and slow moving pedestrians that are separated by a distance of 20cm at the range of 40 m, with an accuracy 2.5 times higher than that of previous models of the millimeter-wave radar.
- The simultaneous operation of multiple millimeter-wave radars has been is realized by controlling the interference between multiple radars, widening the FOV, and making it suitable for monitoring an overall area of a typical intersection.

Panasonic has developed and incorporated the following new technological elements:

1) Multi-dimensional electrical scanning technology that is capable of rapid location sensing and maintains a high degree of sensitivity for pedestrian detection by the suppression of noise due to reflections from metallic vehicles.

2) The orthogonal complementary coded modulation technology has superior separation capabilities without interference, realizing both a high resolution and wide FOV simultaneously, even for a multiple radar configuration operating at the same frequency.

A radar sensor in the millimeter wave band can detect moving objects. However, in order to achieve higher location accuracy while maintaining the FOV, a higher dynamic range was necessary. In addition, it had not been possible to a cover a wide FOV that would enable the monitoring of a complete intersection.

Panasonic has developed the new radar technology as the part of "Research and Development Project for Expansion of Radio Spectrum Resources” supported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan. The company will demonstrate the technology at the ITS World Congress 2013 (October 15 to 18 at Tokyo Big Sight in Japan), using test equipment with an experimental radio license.

On the new radar technology, Panasonic holds 27 patents in Japan and 14 patents overseas including pending applications.

About Panasonic
Panasonic Corporation is a worldwide leader in the development and engineering of electronic technologies and solutions for customers in residential, non-residential, mobility and personal applications. Since its founding in 1918, the company has expanded globally and now operates over 500 consolidated companies worldwide, recording consolidated net sales of 7.30 trillion yen for the year ended March 31, 2013. Committed to pursuing new value through innovation across divisional lines, the company strives to create a better life and a better world for its customers. For more information about Panasonic, please visit the company's website at http://panasonic.net/.

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