SPTDMA®
Imaging radar needs more transmit and receive channels than commodity silicon delivers — but adding chips means cost, power and integration overhead, and conventional time-division switching slashes transmit power and velocity range. SPTDMA is Provizio’s patent-pending hybrid modulation scheme that multiplies channel count from a single radar chip without sacrificing range or velocity.
Applications
Where channel count and detection range are the gating constraints.
Automotive
Sub-1° angular resolution at mass-market price points — AEB, ACC and Level 3+ perception from a single chip plus switching, no expensive multi-chip cascade.
Industrial
On-SoC processing means high-resolution radar perception in compact, power-constrained mining, agricultural and construction sensors — no external compute required.
Multi-sensor
Phase coding gives each transmitter a unique signature — radars can distinguish their own returns from other radars operating in the same 76–81 GHz band.
Defence & UAS
Counter-drone, airspace monitoring and dense surveillance deployments benefit from SPTDMA's interference rejection in environments with many active radars.
How it works
A hybrid modulation scheme that combines the best of DDMA and TDMA.
STEP 01
Switches expand a standard array
A standard radar chip wires each transmit channel to a single antenna, so a 4-channel chip gives just four transmit positions. SPTDMA adds an SP3T switch to every channel, letting each one feed three antenna sub-arrays in turn — turning those 4 channels into 12 effective positions on the same chip.
STEP 02
Hybrid DDMA + TDMA modulation
Within each time slot, all transmitters fire simultaneously, each carrying a unique phase code (DDMA). Unlike pure TDMA — which fires one transmitter at a time and sacrifices transmit power and velocity range — every transmitter here stays on, at full power. Across the cycle, the switches step through positions (TDMA).
STEP 03
Switching within the chirp cycle
SP3T switches step each transmit channel through three positions per chip (4 TX → 12 effective). This high-speed switching is exactly what pure DDMA can't support — SPTDMA adds it without giving up full power, and it happens inside the chirp cycle itself, so there's no latency penalty and no loss of coherent processing.
STEP 04
Phase-coded channel separation
On receive, the DSP reads each return's phase signature and maps it back to the transmitter that sent it, rebuilding the full 12-position virtual array — all on the chip's own embedded DSP. The same phase codes also let it reject interference from any radar that doesn't carry a matching signature.
Featured deployment
Four transmit channels became twelve — at full power, on one chip.
Applied to a single Texas Instruments AWR2944 transceiver, MIMSO's sparse-array antenna and SPTDMA's transmit switching worked together: SPTDMA turned 4 transmit channels into 12 effective ones — at full power and full velocity range — and MIMSO reconstructed a virtual array equivalent to a 138-element filled Uniform Linear Array, a 20× resolution improvement over the chip's native performance. With RaZIR® enhancement on top, the configuration resolved 0.5° azimuth resolution at a price and power envelope incumbent multi-chip cascaded radars cannot reach.
- SPTDMA switching: 4 TX → 12 effective channels, full power per slot
- 138-element virtual array, reconstructed by MIMSO's sparse-array DSP
- 0.5° azimuth resolution with RaZIR® on top
- 325 m detection range — full unambiguous velocity retained
Integration
Runs on the radar SoC
SPTDMA is software-defined: the modulation, demultiplexing and channel separation all execute on the embedded DSP of a commercial radar transceiver, with no external host processor. Because it is a modulation scheme rather than a fixed antenna design, it applies to any MIMO radar whose transmitters can each be driven with an independent phase.
- Any MIMO radar transceiver with independent phase control per transmitter
- Executes on the chip's embedded DSP
- No external host compute required
Questions, answered
SPTDMA FAQ
SPTDMA — Slow-Phase Time Division Multiple Access — is Provizio's patent-pending hybrid radar multiplexing scheme. It combines DDMA-style phase coding within sub-arrays with TDMA-style time slotting across sub-arrays, enabling a single radar chip to drive a much larger virtual array without losing transmit power or velocity range to switching.
Pure TDMA reduces transmit power (only one TX active at a time) and reduces maximum measurable velocity. Pure DDMA can't support the high-speed switching that high-channel-count MIMO designs need. SPTDMA combines both: sub-arrays fire simultaneously with phase coding, while time slots cycle through switch positions. Full power per slot, switching enabled.
Yes. Modulation, demultiplexing and channel separation all execute on the embedded DSP of a commercial radar transceiver. No external host processor is required — the system stays compact and power-efficient.
Mainly that the chip can drive each transmitter with its own phase. SPTDMA tags every transmitter with a unique phase code, so the transmitters must be individually phase-controllable for the DSP to tell them apart again on receive. Given that, SPTDMA is applied in software and reconstructs the multiplexed channels on the chip's own DSP. It is not tied to any one silicon vendor.
Each SPTDMA transmitter carries a unique phase signature. The DSP can identify which signals carry its own phase codes and reject the rest — providing useful interference rejection in environments with multiple active radars (a vehicle carrying several sensors, or dense surveillance deployments).
More channels, more range — same chip.
If you're hitting cost, power or board-space limits stacking radar chips to reach the resolution you need, SPTDMA is the multiplexing approach that extracts more from what you've already got.