As the global automotive industry continues to navigate the twisty path toward fully autonomous driving, chip and sensor suppliers are likely to be taken along for a ride that will require them to support an increasing amount of sensor fusion and related processing.

“The reality in the marketplace is that there is not one right approach for our customers,” said Andreas Schaefer, general manager, ADAS and Infotainment, at Texas Instruments (TI). “The sensor mix in an autonomous vehicle is a perfect example of how OEMs are taking different approaches, with a trend towards sensor fusion. If you fuse, for instance, a radar and a camera sensor, one plus one becomes more than two… Advancing vehicle autonomy requires more technology, more semiconductors across the whole vehicle. TI’s portfolio can address all of those systems, no matter if that's camera, radar, ultrasonic, lidar, or the fusion of these and the required processing.”

Schaefer made that case during a press briefing as TI announced its newest family of automotive lidar, clock and radar chips to expand more autonomous features to a wider range of cars. Chief among these is the LMH13000, which TI claims is the first integrated high-speed lidar laser driver, delivering an “ultra-fast” 800 picoseconds rise time to improve real-time decision-making with “up to 30% longer distance measurements than discrete solutions.”

Anthony Vaughan, marketing manager for high-speed amplifiers at TI, said "Lidar is getting important especially in Level 3, 4, and 5 autonomy. One of the most important features of this device is the ability to control lasers with variations of only 2% over temperature," which gives LIDAR developers flexibility to adjust power settings and perform faster and more accurate object detection.

TI also unveiled automotive clocks that leverage highly-precise bulk acoustic wave technology, including the CDC6C-Q1 oscillator and LMK3H0102-Q1 and LMK3C0105-Q1 clock generators for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Also arriving on the scene is TI's new AWR2944P mmWave radar sensor, which the company said offers advanced front and corner radar capabilities to improve safety..

The LMH13000 also features integrated low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS), complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) and transistor-transistor-logic (TTL) control signals, which TI said eliminates the need for large capacitors or additional external circuitry, while also reducing system costs by an average of 30%. A 4x reduction in device size also means that engineers can mount compact, affordable lidar modules in more areas and across more vehicle models.

Meanwhile, the AWR2944P mmWave radar sensor features improved signal-to-noise ratio, increased computational capabilities, a larger memory capacity, and an integrated radar hardware accelerator that allows the microcontroller and digital signal processor to execute machine learning for edge artificial intelligence applications.

By: DocMemory
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