Upgrading its industrial chain to self-develop and produce 80G radar level dedicated chips

Release date:2023年04月27日 Article author:SKE Reading quantity:1953

     Anhui Shengke Microelectronics Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of SKE was established on August 26, 2022, marking SKE entry into the semiconductor industry. SKE is mainly committed to the development and design of millimeter-wave radar chips,  millimeter-wave power amplifiers, low-noise amplifier chips and sensor-specific ARM chips. Its target is to get two firsts in the radar level measurement industry: the performance of the radar level sensor and the cost control industry.

     Level measurement technology is widely used in various fields such as petroleum, chemical industry, construction, mining, storage and transportation, hydrology and municipal administration. Among them, the millimeter-wave radar level gauge using the W band (77G~81G frequency band) has become the current international radar level measurement instrument because of its unique characteristics of wide bandwidth, narrow beam, high reliability, high directivity, and short wavelength.

    In China, level meters are indispensable instruments for industrial production. Our country has a vast territory and a complete range of industries, so there is a great demand for level instruments. However, China lags behind developed countries in the field of sensors and high-end instruments. The vast majority of instrument companies do not have their own chip technology, but only purchase non-integrated (universal) chips for transformation, consuming 150% of the cost, achieving only 30% of the performance of imported brands. What is even more unacceptable is that the supply chain is completely in the hands of others. Since the decline in Sino-US trade relations, a large number of general-purpose chips have been restricted or even prohibited from being sold into mainland China by Europe and the United States, from "hard to find" to completely out of stock.At present, there are German VEGA, German E+H, German Siemens, and American Emerson in the civilian radar measuring instrument market. Relying on the powerful performance of its chips and extremely low cost, the assembled high-end radar instruments can actually earn about 20 to 3 billion yuan in revenue from mainland China every year. Especially under the double pressure of the soaring raw material prices and the "shortage of cores", the advantages of Western giants in mastering core chip technology are becoming more and more obvious, and they are likely to harvest the global measuring instrument market.

    In order to break the monopoly of foreign products, millimeter-wave radar measuring instruments were developed by SKE since 2019, mainly based on the vehicle-mounted millimeter-wave radar chip. On the basis of the purchased chip platform, we designed and built radar transceiver antennas, programmed intelligent algorithms, and designed focusing lenses by our company. At the end of 2021, 80GHz radar level gauge with SK-R100-01 and SK-R100 -02 type were developed and mass-produced by SKE . These two types of products are widely used in various fields such as petroleum, chemical industry, construction, mining, storage and transportation, hydrology and municipal administration.

    As we all know, due to the influence of the international environment, China's chip development is restricted by others. In the past two years, my country has encouraged all walks of life to realize technological innovation of enterprises and improve domestic independent brands.On March11th this year, after several rounds of discussions and consultations between China and the United States Semiconductor Industry Association, the China-US Semiconductor Industry Technology and Trade Restriction Working Group was confirmed to be established to establish an information sharing mechanism for the Chinese and US semiconductor industries to communicate in a timely manner. Policies on export controls, supply chain security, technologies such as encryption, and trade restrictions.After the news, SMIC's H shares once rose by 12%, and the A-share semiconductor index rose by 6%, the sound of chip investment sounded again. SKE is also closely following the situation, starting from the overall strategy, focusing on the future market, upgrading the industrial chain, and improving the technological content of products, such as self-developed millimeter-wave radar chips, millimeter-wave power amplifiers, low-noise amplifier chips and sensor-specific ARM chips.