【 Abstract 】
LuminWave, a leading company in silicon optical chipscale frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW)4D LiDAR (LiDAR), announced the completion of the second generation of FMCW system-on-chip (SoC) and optical Phased array (OPA) silicon optical chips, according to Myms Consulting. The two chips will be used in the company's silicon optical chip FMCW 4D LiDAR products.
Second generation FMCW SoC wafers
Since its inception, Lomicro has established the development direction of pure solid-state LiDAR on chip level. It realizes large-scale LiDAR integration through mature silicon photonic chip ecology. From the beginning of chip design, frame rate, resolution, cost, reliability and mass production of LiDAR system are taken into account. The LiDAR cost can be reduced by continuously improving the integration of LiDAR chip. The ultimate goal is to bring lidar's price to the same level as CMOS sensors that are already in mass production. Only then will the market for lidar applications truly be opened up and its value be realized in a wide range of areas, including advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), autonomous driving, and consumer electronics.
Highly integrated LiDAR chip
We have a first-mover advantage in the development of LiDAR silicon optical chips and continue to lead the industry through continuous product upgrades and iterations. It is understood that compared with the first generation of FMCW chip, the second generation of FMCW SoC chip released this time adopts the multi-channel parallel FMCW architecture design, the number of parallel FMCW computing units reaches hundreds, the number of computing units increased by 4 times compared with the first generation of products. In addition to the FMCW coherent detection function, a variety of key optical signal processing units are integrated on the chip, such as signal optical frequency modulation, nonlinear compensation and other functional modules, and thousands of optical devices are integrated on a single chip. Through the high integration of a single chip, Luwei Technology realizes the functions that the traditional optical system requires thousands of times in size and cost. The second-generation FMCW SoC is one of the silicon optical chips with the highest integration of a single chip in the world.
Channel parallel FMCW architecture design
At the same time, Lo Wei Technology second generation OPA optical scanning chip also released. It is understood that the second generation of OPA chip has introduced the self-developed optical scanning chip control system, which greatly improves the efficiency of chip scanning while keeping the large scanning Angle and high resolution unchanged, making the chip control power consumption reduced by more than 70% compared with the first generation of OPA chip, and the overall performance of the product has been greatly improved. Further clearing obstacles for the landing of silicon optical chip level FMCW 4D LiDAR products.
Currently, the second generation of FMCW SoC and OPA chips are being tested opto-electronics at the chip and system level, and production-oriented packaging, control and system integration technologies are being developed and refined. Based on the market demand, we constantly polish the performance of chip products to reach the international frontier and domestic leading performance indicators. FMCW SoC and OPA chip will be the core technologies of Luwei Technology to complete the silicon optical FMCW 4D LiDAR.
LiDAR On Chip
"FMCW is a very mature technology in both radio waves and millimeter waves, and has been widely used in a variety of fields, including ADAS," said Andy Sun, CTO of Lovemicrotech. In the optical band, it is not very difficult to build an FMCW system using existing optical communication components to coordinate with scanning platforms for point cloud measurement, but such systems are completely unable to meet the requirements of the autonomous driving and ADAS industry for frame rate, resolution, cost, reliability, and productivity. We believe that only by utilizing CMOS based silicon photonic integration technology to achieve a high density, multi-channel FMCW optical computing engine on a single chip can we deliver a solution that is truly suitable for this market."
The second generation of FMCW SoC chip
Although both FMCW and OPA are mature technologies in the field of millimeter wave and radar, it is a job with high technical barriers to realize highly integrated FMCW SoC and OPA chips on silicon optical chips. Without sufficient technical capabilities and actual combat experience, it is difficult to successfully push these two chips to mass production. The R & D team of Luowei has nearly 20 years of scientific research and working experience in silicon photonics integration technology. The founding team is also a prestigious serial entrepreneur in the field of silicon photonics semiconductor, and has accumulated a lot of scientific research and mass production experience in silicon photonics chips and optoelectronic products. With years of accumulation in FMCW and OPA silicon optical chip design and manufacturing, we have enough technical capabilities and practical experience to push the two chips to mass production.
Luwei Technology will participate in the CIOE exhibition in Shenzhen in September, when it will reveal the second generation of FMCW SoC and OPA chip more detailed technical indicators. In addition, during the exhibition, Luowei Technology will bring its applications and solutions in passenger cars, commercial vehicles, robots, drones and other industries.
Introduction of Luowei Technology
LuminWave is a global leader in laser radar (LiDAR) products and solutions technology. The founding team are all technical talents from the world's top scientific research institutions, with strong silicon photonics chip integration technology and hardware and software development capabilities, with rich silicon photonics research and development and product experience, as well as the increasingly mature silicon photonics ecosystem, The optical phased array (OPA), frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) coherent detection and wafer level micro-nano optics are creatively applied to the field of LiDAR.
