Ripple™, hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®, is an open-radar API standard to enable hardware and software interoperability while accelerating the growth of applications for general purpose consumer radar.

Experts from across the silicon, sensing, automotive and electronics industries have come together to develop open and standardized API interfaces for radar system development. The standardized API calls for general purpose radar that enables interoperability and the rapid deployment of new applications.

Originally released in January 2022, the Ripple standard focused on enabling interoperability between FMCW radars by defining a Hardware Abstraction API, Signal Processing Libraries, and Extensions. In June 2022, Ripple added specification documentation, updates the standard data formats of the Hardware Abstraction level, and adds a Hello World demo. The first Ripple compatible development kits for FMCW were released at CES 2023.

In June 2023, Ripple expanded to cover Pulsed and UWB radar. 

• Enable interoperability between radar hardware and software with standardized APIs for radar system development. 
• Reduce barriers of entry for working with radar and accelerate the growth of radar applications.

Interoperable software libraries: With standardized calls, software libraries can work across various radar hardware implementations, ensuring reusability and easier firmware upgrades.

Growth of radar hardware ecosystems and integrators: With an open API standard, it's easier for integrators to get started, develop, and distribute radar solutions. This reduced barrier to entry will lead to new products and services for consumers.

Innovate and differentiate with extensions: Ripple enables developers to create specialized extensions so that they can build on the standard to support their own differentiated use cases. These extensions can be incorporated as official interfaces in future versions of the standard.

Education and academic research: Standardized software that works across all radar applications can simplify experimentation and prototyping, making radar technology more accessible to students, startups, academics, and researchers.

Radar sensing systems have historically been designed for single applications, with hardware and software custom-developed for each purpose. This means that traditional product solutions — from the hardware to the final user experience — are bespoke. For example, a radar speed gun shares no common components with a radar air traffic control system. Recent technological advances have made radars smaller, cheaper, and lower power. They can now be easily manufactured and embedded across a variety of consumer, industrial, automotive, and medical devices. Radar has evolved into a general purpose sensor where each radar system has the potential to support many different applications.

FMCW

The following 60GHz FMCW development kits are compatible with Ripple open radar APIs. The kit comes with an available ripple wrapper ready for companies to test their software with.

• Infineon (Hardware) (Software)

• Texas Instruments (Hardware A) (Hardware B) (Software)

Pulsed 

The following development kits are compatible with Ripple open radar APIs. The kit comes with an available source code and documentation to start developing your own radar applications using the Ripple API.

• Acconeer (Hardware)

Following the completion of open radar API standards to enable hardware/software interoperability and to accelerate the growth of applications for general purpose consumer radar, the group has started a new project to explore uses case and applications of AgeTech Solutions. The next deliverable will explore AgeTech and how sensor fusion can be used to improve outcomes and create a stable and consistent data pipeline.  

Contact ripple@cta.tech if interested in participating in this project.

Radar sensing is evolving into a versatile, general-purpose capability for supporting many use cases, including consumer applications and industrial/enterprise applications. This whitepaper summarizes the various radar technologies, compares tradeoffs, and outlines use cases.