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Samsung · Chip · Filed Oct 28, 2025 · USPTO published May 14, 2026 · May 14 release

Samsung Patents a Self-Calibrating Radar Receiver That Fixes Its Own Signal Distortion

Radar chips are only as accurate as their analog circuitry — and that circuitry is never perfect. Samsung's new patent describes a radar transceiver that quietly measures its own imperfections and corrects for them, without ever needing to be plugged into external test equipment.

By · Updated · 3 min read

Samsung Patent: Radar I/Q Mismatch Self-Calibration, figure from US 2026/0133283 A1
Figure from the official USPTO publication.
Publication number
US 2026/0133283 A1(US20260133283A1)
Applicant
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Filed · Published
Oct 28, 2025 · May 14, 2026
Inventors
Pranav DAYAL, Gennady FEYGIN, Oren Eytan ELIEZER
Status when we published
Waiting for an examiner
Document
24 claims
US classification
342/194
Parent application
Claims priority from a provisional application 63718298 (filed Nov 8, 2024)

What Samsung's built-in radar self-calibration actually does

Imagine a microphone that automatically figures out it's slightly off-tune and adjusts itself before every recording session. Samsung is trying to do something similar for radar.

Radar systems use two signal channels — called I and Q — that are supposed to be perfectly matched in amplitude and phase. In the real world, tiny manufacturing differences mean they never quite are. Those mismatches, plus small voltage drifts called DC offsets, blur the radar's picture of the world. Normally you'd fix this on a factory test bench with specialized equipment.

Samsung's approach skips the test bench entirely. The radar chip sends a known test signal through its own internal circuitry, measures the distortion it sees, and calculates exactly how much correction to apply — all on its own. Those corrections then stay active when the radar is doing its real job, like detecting objects around a car or a phone.

How the loopback chirp estimates and corrects I/Q errors

The patent describes a quadrature receiver (the part of a radar that splits incoming signals into two channels, I and Q, to capture both amplitude and phase) that can self-diagnose and self-correct two classic problems: I/Q mismatch and DC offsets.

Here's the core mechanism:

  • The radar transmitter sends a chirp signal (a short tone that sweeps across frequencies — the standard waveform in modern FMCW radar) back into its own receiver via an internal loopback path.
  • The digital front-end then measures the beat frequency signal (the difference tone that appears when the received chirp mixes with the transmitted one), its image (a mirror artifact caused by I/Q imbalance), and any DC offset riding on top.
  • From those three measurements, the system computes exactly how much amplitude correction, phase correction, and DC subtraction to apply.

The patent covers both multi-iteration approaches (refine the estimate over several passes) and single-iteration approaches (get it right in one shot). Once corrections are computed, they are baked into the signal processing pipeline and applied continuously during normal radar operation — including when the radar is scanning for real targets.

What self-calibrating radar means for consumer and automotive devices

For automotive radar and millimeter-wave sensing in consumer devices, calibration accuracy directly affects how well the system distinguishes real objects from ghost echoes. Right now, factory calibration is a time-consuming step that adds cost and can drift as hardware ages or temperature changes. A chip that recalibrates itself on demand — or even periodically in the field — sidesteps both problems.

This also matters for miniaturization. As radar moves into phones, wearables, and in-cabin vehicle sensors, there's no room (or budget) for external calibration rigs. Samsung's approach embeds the calibration logic entirely in the digital signal processing layer, which means it can live on the same chip as the radar front-end with minimal extra silicon.

Source: US 2026/0133283 A1 at the USPTO (PDF). Full patent text and figures are in the official publication.

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