Self-diagnosis device
AssigneeDenso Corporation
InventorMasato Kohtani
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A self-diagnosis device of a module including a general-purpose multi-channel IC and a reception phase shifter IC having a plurality of transmission output terminals and reception terminals is configured to perform a self-diagnosis of the reception phase shifter IC by utilizing a signal that is generatable by the general-purpose multi-channel IC, which is enabled by a self-diagnosis signal generation unit that generates a self-diagnosis signal by using (a) a first output signal supplied to a multi-channel receiver of the general-purpose multi-channel IC and (b) a third output signal and a self-diagnosis clock signal synchronously output from a single PLL.
Claims15
A self-diagnosis device of a phased-array antenna module for a millimeter wave radar, the self-diagnosis device comprising:
- a reception phase shifter integrated circuit (IC) including a reception channel that has a phase shifter disposed on a reception path for a phase shift of a plurality of reception signals of each of a plurality of reception channels;
- a general-purpose multi-channel IC that:
- includes multi-input channels and multi-output channels,
- incudes a singular Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) that generates and enables synchronous output of a first output signal, a second output signal, a third output signal, and a fourth output signal,
- receives output signals, of the plurality of reception signals input from the reception phase shifter IC and, through the multi-input channels, respectively,
- mixes the output signals from the reception phase shifter IC with the first output signal to obtain intermediate frequency signals, and
- outputs the intermediate frequency signals through the multi-output channels, respectively;
- a transmission phase shifter IC that outputs signals of a plurality of transmission channels by using the second output signal;
- and
- a self-diagnosis signal generation unit generating a self-diagnosis signal that is input to the reception channel of the reception phase shifter IC based on the third output signal and the fourth output signal synchronously output with the first output signal and the second output signal.
A phased-array antenna module comprising:
- a reception phased array circuit including:
- a first reception phase shifter circuit, and
- a second reception phase shifter, and
- a self-diagnosis signal generator located in the first reception phase shifter;
- a multi-channel circuit including:
- a first multi-channel receiver,
- a second multi-channel receiver, and
- a phase-locked loop circuit;
- and
- a transmission phased array circuit including:
- a first transmission phase shifter circuit, and
- transmission antennas,
- wherein the reception phased array circuit is configured to output:
- (i) a first composite reception signal from the first reception phase shifter circuit to the first multi-channel receiver, and
- (ii) a second composite reception signal from the second reception phase shifter circuit to the second multi-channel receiver;
- wherein the multi-channel circuit is configured to receive:
- (i) the first composite reception signal,
- (ii) the second composite reception signal, and
- (iii) a reference clock signal;
- wherein the multi-channel circuit is configured to output:
- (i) a first intermediate frequency signal based at least partly upon:
- the first composite signal, and
- a first output signal,
- (ii) a second output signal based at least partly on the reference clock signal,
- (iii) a third output signal based at least partly on the reference clock signal and generated independently from the second output signal, and
- (iv) a self-diagnosis clock signal based on the reference clock signal, and having a lower frequency than the reference clock signal;
- wherein the first transmission phase shifter circuit is configured to receive the second output signal;
- and
- wherein the first reception phase shifted circuit is configured to receive:
- (i) the self-diagnosis clock signal, and
- (ii) the third output signal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.