Due to the late development of FMCW Lidar, immature technology, imperfect supply chain, and difficulty in reducing cost in the short term, it is difficult to mass produce FMCW Lidar and has not been applied on a large scale.
According to the different ranging methods, lidar can be divided into ToF and FMCW two categories, FMCW lidar is frequency modulated continuous wave lidar, mainly composed of laser, detector, coherent optical path, scanning components. FMCW laser radar uses frequency to measure distance. By sending and receiving continuous laser beams, it interferes with the return light and local light, and uses mixing detection technology to measure the frequency difference between sending and receiving, and then converts the distance of the target object through the frequency difference.
FMCW Lidar is the development trend of the next generation of lidar technology. Compared with the pulse lidar, FMCW Lidar has the advantages of strong anti-bad weather and other laser interference ability, high integration, high sensitivity, high signal-to-noise ratio, low cost, and broad application prospects in the fields of automatic driving, industrial automation, robotics and so on. However, due to the late development of FMCW Lidar, immature technology, imperfect supply chain and short term cost reduction difficulties, the mass production of FMCW Lidar has not been implemented in a large scale.
According to the 2023-2028 Frequency modulation Continuous Wave (FMCW) Lidar Industry Market In-depth survey and Investment Prospect Analysis Report released by the New Industry Research Center, due to the high entry threshold of the FMCW Lidar industry, there are still few enterprises engaged in the research, development and production of FMCW Lidar in the world. Mainly include Aeva, Mobileye, SiLC, Scantinel Photonics, Baraja, LightIC, Light Scoop Technology, Lowei, Micro Source Photonics, Alida and so on.
With high sensitivity and more accurate pointing accuracy, FMCW Lidar solves the problem of moving target recognition in the field of autonomous driving, which is expected to promote the breakthrough of autonomous driving technology and has huge potential for future market development. In recent years, FMCW Lidar has attracted extensive attention from the capital, including SiLC, Scantinel Photonics, Light Spoon Technology and other companies have obtained different levels of financing.
Aeva is one of the world's leading suppliers of head FMCW Lidar technology. In November 2022, Aeva revealed that its new generation of FMCW Lidar will be ready for mass production in 2024. In order to solve the application problem of FMCW Lidar, Baraja Enterprise of Australia proposed a new solution, namely random modulated continuous wave Lidar (RMCW Lidar), which is different from FMCW Lidar mainly in signal modulation. Guangdiao Technology is one of the few enterprises engaged in the research and development of FMCW Lidar in China. The company has the core patent of coherent detection technology, which can realize the output of 4D laser point cloud.
Industry analysts from Xinsi said that due to the difficulty in mass production and immature technology, the FMCW Lidar has not yet been applied on a large scale, and is expected to be commercially available around 2027. There are few enterprises engaged in the research and development and production of FMCW Lidar in the world, but FMCW Lidar has obvious advantages in sensitivity, detection range and anti-interference ability, which is the development trend of the next generation of Lidar technology. With the technological breakthrough, the future application prospect of FMCW Lidar is still promising.
