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Meet Euro NCAP Child Presence Detection Requirementswith Low-power 60-GHz mmWave Radar Sensors

Tribhuwan Persaud

When shopping for new cars, safety-minded consumers can review New Car Assessment Program (NCAP)
ratings to see how cars compare NCAP ratings vary by region, but Euro NCAP has been driving the initiative forchild presence detection inside cars as part of its roadmap.
Going into 2025 and beyond, only direct sensing solutions will garner NCAP points, steering automakers awayfrom indirect sensing alternatives – such as door-opening logic, pressure capacitive sensing and unreliableweight sensing solutions – toward approaches that use a single 60-GHz radar sensor.
60-GHz radar sensors deliver improved accuracy and are more cost-effective than solutions such as weightsensors and camera-based alternatives, which can struggle in challenging real-world lighting conditions. Sensors
such as the 60-GHz AWRL6432 radar sensor can help you meet Euro NCAP design requirements by enablingin-cabin sensing that can detect a child’s presence in a car, including in the footwells, and enable very low
system bill-of-materials costs.

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Meet Euro NCAP Child Presence Detection Requirements with Low-power
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See our automotive 60-GHz radar demo video
Watch the demo video "Using 60-GHz radar sensors for automotive child presence detection
and intruder alerts" to learn how low-power 60-GHz mmWave radar sensors can deliver fullcabin automotive child presence detection and intruder monitoring.

Streamlining automotive child presence detection
Many companies have tested the potential to save children who are left in cars unattended. For example, TI has
performed several tests related to child presence detection inside a two-row SUV with the AWRL6432. The tests
included the detection of a breathing doll, simulating a child, in a rear- or forward-facing car seat or even laying
in the footwell. Just one sensor was able to detect the doll’s presence across two rows of seats, including thefootwell of both the first and second rows. Figure 1b shows how the radar sensor was mounted overhead.
Test results, shown in Figure 1, demonstrate the sensor’s accuracy and ability to detect a breathing doll left in
an SUV. You can see that the doll placed in the front footwell and in a rear-facing car seat installed in both thefront passenger seat and the second row driver’s side seat are all highlighted as ”detected,” even when the car’sengine is off.

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Meet Euro NCAP Child Presence Detection Requirements with Low-power
60-GHz mmWave Radar Sensors
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Figure 1. (a) Detection of a child (Baby Doll) in the front driver footwell, (b) front passenger seat rearfacing, and (c) 2nd row driver-side rear-facing inside SUV using the AWRL6432.
Harnessing the low-power capabilities of mmWave radar sensors
Euro NCAP requires child presence detection systems to run for a minimum of 15 minutes after the engine isturned off, ensuring that the sensor can scan, detect and alert drivers if a child was left in the vehicle or gained
unattended access to the cabin.
Most radar sensors typically consume an average of hundreds of milliwatts, some as high as 4 W. Newer
60-GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) sensors with low-power architectures such as the AWRL6432 only consume
an average of <10 mW over a 500-ms frame period. Minimizing chirp time and processing time can lead toaverage power-optimized consumption as low as 2 mW, which helps automakers in two ways:
1. Enabling highly accurate child presence detection without performance trade-offs to save power on multipletrips.
2. Also facilitating intrusion detection with the same sensor, protecting vehicles until the consumer’s next trip.
For intrusion detection capabilities, radar sensor must be able to continuously run, monitor and accurately detect
an intruder inside the vehicle for extended periods of time.
Figure 2 shows that the AWRL6432 sensor is capable of proximity sensing, detecting a person close to the car
1 m out. This is important for false flags if, for example, someone was standing close to a car in a grocery store
parking lot loading their own groceries into their car. If a person were to actually break into the car, breaking theproximity zone by sticking their hand through a window, for example, the sensor would then alert owners that
there is an intruder.

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Figure 2. Intrusion detection simulation using the AWRL6432 (a) No living presence near car, (b) Personstanding near the car, (c) Person reaching into car, Sensor detecting an arm reaching through a carwindow.
Conclusion
Low-power 60-GHz radar devices such as the AWRL6432 enable automakers to support child presence
detection and intrusion detection while also helping meet developing NCAP requirements. The AWRL6432
sensor’s low-power capability makes it a good fit for electric vehicles, which have strict power budgets.
Implementing these capabilities with a single chip saves space and cost, helping automakers incorporate theseimportant safety features even on low-end models.

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