A new member has been added to the Ai-Thinker radar module series! The 60G millimeter-wave radar module series products are about to be launched, equipped with functions such as respiratory and heart rate measurement, 3D presence sensing, etc. Let's take a look at the details.

Product Overview

Rd-60 is a 60GHz millimeter-wave radar sensor module developed by Ai-Thinker based on RS6130. The module internally integrates an AiP millimeter-wave radar system with a 60GHz FMCW carrier and multi-protocol wireless connections, including BLE5.3, 802.15.4, Thread, and Matter. It also integrates a 1T3R AiP radar antenna array, a 2.4G wireless connection antenna crystal oscillator, and a 1MB Flash. 

The module includes four low-power consumption management modes: shutdown, standby, idle, and working. Rd-60 not only has low power consumption in standby mode but also when sensing and connecting through a fast burst engine and a high-performance radio frequency transceiver. The flexible mode configuration allows the power consumption of the entire module to meet various demanding application requirements. Its configuration and data collection can be achieved through UART / SPI / I²C digital interfaces.

Product Features

  1. It adopts SMD packaging and is compatible with 1.7mm pin headers.
  2. It has a continuous sweep frequency bandwidth of 6GHz.
  3. The radar antenna supports 1T3R and can achieve different configuration modes such as 1T1R, 1T2R, and 1T3R.
  4. The equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP) is 17.5dBm.
  5. The radar has a large detection angle, covering a horizontal FOV of 120 degrees and a vertical FOV of 120 degrees.
  6. The farthest sensing distance of the radar is 20 meters (depending on the RCS size of the detection target).
  7. The nearest sensing distance of the radar is 0.01 meters (with a human body target as a reference).
  8. The module size is 19 * 19mm.
  9. It supports protocols: physically supports BLE5, 802.15.4; protocol-level support for BLE5.3, Thread, Matter, and a 2.4 private protocol.
  10. Bluetooth LEPHY: 1Mbps, 2Mbps, long-distance S2(500Kbps), S8(125Kbps).
  11. Bluetooth transmit power is 4dBm@BLE1dBm, and receive sensitivity is -95dBm@BLE1dBm.

Main Parameters

  1. Packaging SMD23 compatible with DIP-23
  2. Size 19.0*19.0（±0.2）mm
  3. Antenna Form Board-mounted antenna
  4. Spectrum Range 58G ~64GHz
  5. Work Temperature -40°C ~85 C
  6. Storage Environment 40°C ~125 C, <90%RH
  7. Power Supply Range Power Supply Voltage 1.7V ~5.5V, Power Supply Current ≥500 mA
  8. Support Interfaces UART/IIC
  9. Serial Port Rate UART compatible with 16550 industrial standard, Supports a maximum baud rate of 3 Mbps.

Product Highlights

Power Consumption Breakthrough: 
10μA + human presence sensing power consumption. It can be driven by a button battery. Rd-60 is developed based on RS6130, which is a world-first 10μA single-chip "60G millimeter-wave radar + multi-protocol wireless" intelligent sensor. Compared with other radar modules of the company, the power consumption is reduced by more than 90% under the same conditions. The module's four low-power consumption management modes allow it to sense human presence states in a low-power-consumption mode and be applied to industries such as smart locks and doorbells.

High Integration: 

Small in size, plug-and-play. The module size is 19 * 19mm, saving product space occupation and can be quickly embedded into the product motherboard. It supports IIC and UART interfaces and is flexibly applied to different intelligent scenarios and terminal products.

High Stability: 

Good anti-interference ability, stable performance. It has advantages such as super detection ability, a very simple development process, and multi-protocol wireless connections. Its patented AiP millimeter-wave antenna technology reaches the industry-leading level in performance such as bandwidth, gain, and FOV, solving pain points in the intelligent sensor industry such as unstable performance, insufficient detection ability, and complex development processes.

Application Scenarios


Smart Security: 

Induction access control, building intercoms, electronic cat's eyes, etc. For example, when applied to doorbells and locks, the access control system can be awakened when a person approaches, and the access control system can be in a low-power-consumption state when a person leaves. It is not affected by environmental light, temperature, etc., and can greatly reduce power consumption and make the device have a longer standby time.

Smart Home: 

Small in size, easier to integrate, sensing various motion states and distances of the human body, having high performance and also helping to save energy and reduce costs. When integrated into products such as refrigerators, air conditioners, and televisions, it occupies a small space. For example, when applied to a smart refrigerator, it is more compact and convenient. In the radar's detection area, the operation of a large-screen display can be adjusted according to the movement of people. For example, when a person enters the detection area, the display starts, and when a person leaves the detection area, the display stops.

Smart Healthcare: 

The 60GHz frequency band millimeter-wave emitted by Rd-60 can make more accurate judgments on the information reflected by the human body. Combined with heart rate information, the perception of human presence is more stable. As a module that can detect breathing, heart rate, sleep, and falls for the first time in history, Rd-60 can provide more comprehensive detection for smart healthcare products and can achieve more considerate health monitoring.

Developer’s First Experience

First, look at the radar's platform interface. 

The FFT data is the first to be shown. It helps users understand the frequency components, amplitude, and phase information of a signal by converting it from the time domain to the frequency domain, indicating that a signal can be represented as a superposition of sine waves of different frequencies. FFT can be used in signal processing (analyzing frequency characteristics, filtering, noise elimination, etc.), audio processing (analyzing, synthesizing, and processing audio signals, such as pitch recognition, audio compression, etc.), communication (modulation and demodulation, channel analysis, spectrum monitoring, etc.), image processing (frequency-domain filtering, feature extraction, etc.), and biomedical applications (such as frequency-domain analysis of ECG and EEG). This shows that the radar can assist in image recognition and is the raw data for algorithms.

Then, there is parameter configuration. 

For example, in multi-antenna configuration, 1T1R means one transmit and one receive, and our 24G radar Rd-03D is 1T2R. The working frequency band can be adjusted from 57 to 64.1GHz. 
After configuration, there are calculation results that automatically adapt to the structure of the final frame data and confirm the data reported by the radar. 

The type of data reported by the radar can be selected as point cloud + target tracking. Looking at the serial port output information, we can see the information of three coordinate systems and velocity, indicating that the radar can collect three-dimensional information and obtain more information in space, laying the foundation for attitude detection. Looking at the 3D point cloud information, we can see the spatial sense and continuously obtain image data by marking points. Transmitting the radar data out, we can feel the changes through an animated image.

In conclusion, the difficulty of 60GHz radar lies in the application of algorithms. Ai-Thinker is working hard to overcome this, and we believe that there will be that day.