RF Solder Ball Break Detection in Automotive FMCW Radars Using Isolated Targets’ Phase

Abstract

Embedded wafer level ball grid array (eWLB) packaging is a common technology for radar transceiver monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) in the automotive radar industry. One of the challenging issues with the eWLB packages is the radio frequency solder ball breaks (BBs), due to its adverse effects on the radar performance. In this paper, a method for BB detection (BBD) based on digital signal processing is proposed. This method exploits the collected data from the environment during the sensing task of the radar receiver to detect BBs in real-time. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this work is the first one that addresses the BBD problem solely by digital signal processing, meaning that no additional analog hardware is required for the detection. To validate the performance of the proposed method, simulation results for measured radar data are provided.