Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Renesas, a global leader in microcontrollers, analog, power and SoC, is acquiring India’s fabless Steradian Semiconductors. Bengaluru headquartered Steradian is into 4D imaging radar solutions, and the acquisition will help Renesas expand its reach in the radar market and boost automotive and industrial sensing solution offerings. This will be an all-cash deal, expected to close by the end of 2022.

Radars can accurately detect objects over long distances, day or night, even during harsh weather or other adverse environmental conditions. With advancements of ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) in the automotive market, the 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). For these reasons, radar is considered an essential sensing technology for ADAS, and the number of radar sensors installed in vehicles is expected to triple over the next five years. Acquiring Steradian’s radar technology will help Renesas expand its automotive product portfolio and cater to such growth potential.

“Radar is an indispensable technology for ADAS, which uses a complex combination of various sensors,” says Hidetoshi Shibata, President and CEO of Renesas. “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,” Shibata said.

Steradian has extensive expertise in radar technology and is operating in the 76-81 GHz band. Its 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.
Source: BusinessToday