Huawei's Sensor Layout

Recently, Huawei's first millimeter-wave AI super-sensing sensor was officially unveiled, but unlike what people think, this millimeter-wave radar is not used in the automotive field, but in the whole house intelligence. It is true that this is the first time Huawei has used intelligent driving. The millimeter-wave sensing technology in the field is applied to the home, but obviously, this is not Huawei's first attempt at the sensor.

As the core technology of the Internet of Things, sensors are even considered to be technologies that can change the present and future world. For Huawei, which is trying to take root in the semiconductor industry, the layout of sensors has become an indispensable key link.

Entering the Field of Sensing, Smart Cars Are the Catalyst

Here is a brief introduction to the sensor. The sensor is a detection device that measures the perceived changes in the outside world, transforms the perceived non-electrical signals into electrical signals or other required forms of information output according to certain rules, and finally completes the information transformation from physical signals to electrical signals to meet the needs of information. requirements for transmission, processing, storage, display, recording, and control.

When 5G was first commercialized in 2019, sensors were once considered the blue ocean of 5G applications. The reason is that the realization of the Internet of Everything era brought by 5G is inseparable from a variety of sensors. As the "senses" of information technology systems, sensing technology is becoming more and more important with the continuous development of 5G technology. It can be said that the speed of the progress of sensing technology directly affects the realization speed of the intelligent industry.

Taking mobile phones as an example, the current smartphones are developing rapidly, with more and more functions and more powerful performance. For users, the most intuitive feeling is to make life more convenient, with a mobile phone in hand, everything is worry-free. Although the reason for the increase in the computing power of mobile phones is the enhancement of processor performance and integration, it is the sensors hidden in the mobile phone that improve the user interaction experience. It can be said that the more sensors, the more accurate the corresponding monitoring data provided by the mobile phone, and the better the user experience will be.

So What Is the Origin of Huawei's Layout of the Sensor Industry?

As one of the giants in the global communications industry, Huawei has maintained a high level of leadership in the 5G field. According to the Dell'Oro Group's 3rd quarter report, Huawei ranks first in the world in terms of RAN share in the global telecom market. At the same time, the "5G RAN Competitiveness Analysis and Evaluation Report" released by GlobalData in January also showed that Huawei's 5G products ranked first in the world with full scores in the four evaluation dimensions of radiofrequency combination, baseband capability, deployment flexibility, and technology evolution. Since 2018, Huawei's 5G has been the world's only leader for four consecutive years.

If 5G is Huawei's battlefield, then sensors are the horns that inspire it. As the world's leading provider of ICT (information and communication) infrastructure and smart terminals, Huawei itself is a market for sensors. All need to use a large number of sensors such as lidar, cameras, optical devices, and MEMS microphones.

The opportunity for Huawei to officially announce its entry into the sensor industry is the unprecedented development boom of smart cars. With years of technology accumulation in the ICT field, Huawei has opened up two key links in the fields of chips (computing) and communications (5G) required for future intelligent connected vehicles. The positioning of the company is also becoming clearer and clearer - "do not build cars, only be a system-level supplier of car companies", mainly to provide car companies with intelligent networked automotive components based on Huawei's ICT capabilities, and sensors are a key part of it.

On October 22, 2019, at the summit forum of the World Intelligent Connected Vehicle Conference, Xu Zhijun, Huawei's rotating chairman, made it clear that Huawei would build core sensors for smart cars such as lidar and millimeter-wave radar. Huawei believes that when the car is truly moving towards autonomous driving, it needs to be equipped with sensors such as lidar, millimeter-wave radar, and cameras.

At the meeting, Xu Zhijun revealed that Huawei's first direction in the smart car business is to build an MDC intelligent driving platform based on Huawei's Ascend chip, plus an intelligent driving operating system and autonomous driving cloud services. MDC (Mobile Data Center: Mobile Data Center) intelligent driving platform is a computing platform specially designed by Huawei for intelligent driving, including a series of standardized hardware products, intelligent driving operating systems AOS, VOS, and MDC Core, supporting toolchain and vehicle-road-cloud collaboration Service, support component service, interface standardization, development tool, and meet vehicle-level safety requirements.

The sensor ecosystem is part of the four ecosystems that Huawei has built to build the MDC intelligent driving platform, mainly including lidar, millimeter-wave radar, and cameras, so that these sensors can be easily connected to the MDC. It is understood that Huawei will not only use 5G technology to develop millimeter-wave radar to achieve all-weather imaging but also make full use of the world's leading optoelectronic technology to develop lidar to truly solve the cost and performance issues faced by lidar.

At this point, the Huawei sensor battle has officially kicked off.

Lidar: R&D and Investment in Both Hands

Yole Development data shows that in 2021, Huawei LiDAR has grabbed 3% of the global market share, ranking fifth.

By sorting out the public information, it can be found that as of now, four models of BAIC New Energy ARCFOX HI, Great Wall Auto Salon Mecha Dragon, Nezha S, and Avita 11 have been announced to be equipped with Huawei LiDAR. Among them, BAIC New Energy ARCFOX is the first car that is deeply bound to Huawei, and it is also the first mass-produced car equipped with Huawei's three lidar solutions. "Avita" is a high-end brand jointly created by Huawei, Changan, and CATL.

Models Equipped with Huawei LiDAR

Judging from the above existing achievements, Huawei's achievements in the field of lidar should not be underestimated, and this is also the result of its R&D and investment.

In terms of research and development, Huawei has always been in a hurry. Its HiSilicon has grown into a presence that the West is afraid of in just over a decade, and its research and development in the field of lidar is also unrelenting.

As early as 2016, Huawei began to develop lidar products and launched the "North Slope Strategy". In December 2020, Huawei officially released vehicle-grade high-performance lidar products and solutions - a single-axis mirrorless camera. 96-line lidar. This product is based on Huawei's analysis of the unique scenarios that LiDAR needs to deal with and chooses the micro-rotating mirror scanner architecture. Through precise scanning and optical path control, it improves the stability and consistency of point cloud accuracy and the photoelectricity of the transceiver module. conversion efficiency. In addition, Huawei has also established the first pilot production line of automotive-grade lidars and is advancing at the pace of producing 100,000 sets per year.

In 2020, Wang Jun, President of Huawei Smart Car Solutions BU, also revealed that Huawei has an optoelectronic technology research center in Wuhan, with a total of more than 10,000 people. The center is developing lidar technology, and the goal is to quickly develop 100 lines of lidar.

While immersing in research and development, Huawei's Hubble is also actively deploying the lidar industry chain, investing in companies such as Zonghui Xinguang, Nanjing Core Vision, Changguang Huaxin, and Focuslight Technology, and deploying VCSEL, SPAD, and other technologies.

Millimeter-wave Radar: Empowering Automobiles and Industries

Compared to the expensive LIDAR, millimeter-wave radar is much more "people-friendly", and Huawei also has its unique advantages in the layout of millimeter-wave radar field, not only fully owns the 5G technology (including millimeter-wave band technology), in the realization of 5G hardware equipment process, also mastered the millimeter-wave filter, frequency multiplier, mixer, power divider, and other basic design methods. Power divider and other basic design methods.

In terms of getting on board, on February 22, 2022, JAC VW Sihao E50 Aparo was officially launched, debuting with Huawei's intelligent driving system, including the first time onboard Huawei's self-researched 77 GHz forward millimeter-wave radar.

However, in the field of in-vehicle millimeter-wave radar, Huawei's R&D focus seems to have shifted from traditional millimeter-wave radar to high-resolution 4D imaging radar. The reason is simple, as the requirements of autonomous driving improve, the traditional millimeter-wave radar exists in the lack of height perception, insufficient horizontal resolution, does not support the vertical resolution and other issues gradually become a problem that limits its development, millimeter-wave radar if you want to again occupy the "C" position in the three pieces of autonomous driving, upgrade 4D perception is imperative. In Huawei's view, imaging radar is bound to become the next essential weapon for higher-order autonomous driving.

On April 18, 2021, Huawei released its imaging millimeter-wave radar, the core sensor for ADS (Autonomous Driving Solution), with 12 transmit channels and 24 receive channels in a large antenna array, which is 24 times better than the conventional millimeter-wave radar antenna configuration of 3 transmits and 4 receives. This is 24 times more than the conventional millimeter-wave radar with 3 transmitting and 4 receiving antenna configurations, and 50% more receiving channels than typical imaging radars in the industry.

In addition, through the large array design, Huawei 4D imaging radar can support both near and far waveforms, taking into account both long-range and close-range wide-angle coverage, with the long waveform supporting over 300 meters of coverage within 18° and the short waveform achieving 150 meters of coverage within 120°, fully meeting the requirements of urban scenes such as intersections, which will align camera and LIDAR targets. At present, Huawei 4D imaging radar is not yet officially on board.

Although compared to LIDAR, Huawei millimeter-wave radar onboard is slightly inferior, but it has opened up a new field, which is the whole house intelligence mentioned at the beginning of this article.

According to the introduction, Huawei's new millimeter-wave AI super-sensitive sensor is able to sense the subtle movements of the human body within 16 square meters, with 99.9% recognition accuracy, and within this 16 square meters, it can also be finely divided by 1 square meter space. In addition in the human body position and track tracking positioning accuracy is controlled within ± 0.5m, through the integration of infrared sensing capabilities, can be a double determination of moving objects, effectively determine whether the movement is the human body, to exclude interference so as to make the most accurate operation.

Huawei said that in the near future, millimeter-wave sensor technology will be widely used in the whole house smart life, through its accurate human body sensing, reliable anti-interference ability, and a wide range of monitoring coverage, empowering the whole house home scene.

All in all, Huawei's millimeter-wave radar technology has empowered two major areas: the automotive and smart home.

Currently, with the support of 5G technology, the sensor industry is in a golden period of rapid development, and the China Business Industry Research Institute expects that the market size of China's sensors will increase to 315 billion yuan in 2022. Although there is a huge market prospect, most of China's current production is low-end sensors, high-end sensor imports accounted for 80%, it must be said that Huawei's entry situation will certainly bring a new situation in the market.

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