OUTLINES:
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Radar industry: Yole Développement (Yole) forecasts significant growth for an already large market: +5% CAGR between 2019 and 2025.
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Special focus: the consumer market segment
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Consumer is becoming an attractive segment and will show a 56% CAGR during the same period.
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COVID-19 pandemic will delay the product launch which is not significant relative to the time frame of the project.
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The consumer radar market supply chain is just being establishing.
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One of the most game-changing evolutions is the potential acceptance of radar for HMIs , which is also related to consumer applications.
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Vayyar has seen the potential of a new market in medical and consumer applications, currently with 0.13 % share.
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Interviews:
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A dedicated interview with Raviv Melamed, CEO & Co-Founder of Vayyar. has been performed by Yole and System Plus Consulting analysts for i-Micronews: Unleashing the potential of radar with 4D imaging
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Another interview is also available on EETIMES: Under the Hood
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“Consumer is the newest market segment in the radar industry,” comments Cédric Malaquin, Technology & Market Analyst, RF electronics at Yole Développement (Yole).“Market opportunities are huge. They will be driven by consumer adoption of in-air motion sensing devices. So far, a single end system player, Google, is pushing radar-based in-air motion sensing. Google is highly motivated to face competition from Apple and Amazon.”
With this single player, Yole, the market research & strategy consulting company, is expecting the market to grow to US$250 million by 2025, with +56% CAGR between 2019 and 2025. Yole’s analysts do not expect significant shipments for drones and few for presence detection. For the motion sensing case, however, they anticipate adoption through the home assistant market.
Therefore, in-air gesture sensing is a key technology for consumer devices, especially in the smart home era. However, fierce competition exists in this market, where we can see other sensing principles, mostly camera based, as well as other interaction methods, for instance voice recognition based, explains Cédric Malaquin from Yole.
Radar comes as an alternative technology, enabling privacy and with low power consumption. Google and other radar-based gesture sensing protagonists will push the privacy advantage to differentiate in this competitive market. Indeed, the radar processing is performed at the edge and not in the cloud. Consumer adoption will be the key point, with a choice between consumer privacy concerns and exposure to another radiating device, states Yole.
Yole and its partner System Plus Consulting have been following the radar industry for a while and deliver an in-depth understanding of the market evolution and technical disruption through a wide collection of RF electronics reports. Both companies had the opportunity to detail their vision of the radar industry and especially point out the evolution of radar technology for industrial and automotive applications in a relevant article published last week: Radar sensing, serving more use cases than you think. The status of the markets, impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and technical innovations are well described in this article posted on i-Micronews.
Regarding the consumer market segment, the adoption of radar technologies is one of the key elements that explains the status of the radar industry today and its future. System Plus Consulting supports Yole in these daily investigations and offers today a comprehensive reverse engineering and costing analysis dedicated to the UWB 4D Imaging RF Radar SoC, VYYR2401, extracted from the Walabot Home system, a smart home solution based on radar technology. Walabot is the consumer brand from Vayyar that offers UWB 4D imaging systems. The company built all its systems based on the RF SoC manufactured by Vayyar. The first SoC developed by Vayyar was the VYYR2401, analyzed in System Plus Consulting’s report. This chip is used in a smartphone add-on device that detects pipes and cables behind walls as well as in a fall detection system, that has been torn down for the report. Without doubt, the added value of Vayyar’s approach is the simplicity of integration. The RF SoC features an on-chip DSP that processes the data from the transceiver.
Stéphane Elisabeth, Technology & Cost Analyst at System Plus Consulting explains: “With an external MCU , it became understandable by any processor with machine learning features on the market, like a Snapdragon from Qualcomm, for example.”
Vayyar, a startup company, has indeed seen the potential of a new market in medical and consumer applications, currently with 0.13 % share. The UWB radio frequency SoC from the company was introduced into the market in 2013. Having first developed radar technology in medical applications, such as breath-based cancer detection and fall detection, the company is now diversifying into in-cabin monitoring and ultra-short-range radar in automotive.
“… Part of our mission to make 4D imaging radar an integral part of day-to-day life, involves creating mature solutions that allow our partners to develop applications seamlessly over our platform. Our Radar-on-Chip features an integrated DSP, MCU and all other analog and digital RF components on one chip, eliminating the need for partners to develop the radar side or to invest extensive resources on all of the software and hardware behind a fully integrated radar solution,” details Raviv Melamed from Vayyar – Full interview on i-Micronews.
What will be the evolution of the consumer market segment? Will home assistant continue to provide the main opportunities for radar companies? How will the radar technologies evolve?… System Plus Consulting and Yole invite you to stay tuned on i-Micronews and discover future articles, interviews and webcasts.
Yole Développement and System Plus Consulting publish numerous power and wireless-related reports including these on radar. Make sure to be aware of the latest news coming from the industry and get an overview of our activities, including interviews with leading companies and more. Stay tuned!
WEBCAST – Recorded version: The Radar Industry is Entering its Commercial Era.
Acronyms
- CAGR: Compound Annual Growth Rate
- HMI: Human Machine Interface
- UWB: Ultra-Wide Band
- RF SoC: Radio Frequency System on Chip
- DSP: Digital Signal Processor
- MCU: Microcontroller Unit
Extracted from:
- Vayyar VYYR2401 4D UWB Radar Imaging SoC report, System Plus Consulting, 2020
- Status of the Radar Industry: players, applications and technology trends 2020 report, Yole Développement
