At present, China's auto industry is entering the era of "new modernization", represented by ADAS & Autonomous, connectivity, Electrification and Shared services. According to IHS Markit, total automotive electronic systems will hit $180bn by 2023, with the average car using $500 or more semiconductors, with big increases in applications such as ADAS, Powertrains and Infotainment. Among them, ADAS ranked first with a growth rate of 23.6%.
Part of the reason for the rapid growth of ADAS is that carmakers are working to make cars safer, constantly developing new technologies to help reduce road accidents and ensure the safety of their internal connections. In the past few years, vehicle ADAS active safety systems have made a qualitative leap thanks to technologies such as high-precision electronic sensors (lasers, radar and cameras), high-speed multi-core on-chip systems (SoC) that support artificial intelligence, and high-speed on-board networks.
On the other hand, transportation regulators around the world, including In China, have increased their evaluation standards in their own safety regulations and requirements, which all vehicles must comply with. All these clearly indicate that China is attaching increasing importance to the active safety function of ADAS.
The "qualitative leap" is driven by the complex hardware and software processing capabilities, which are rapidly promoting the failure protection engineering design to become one of the important standards in the automotive industry today. Automotive semiconductor suppliers such as Microchip have been committed to provide a wealth of MCU (single chip Microcomputer) and automotive networking solutions to meet the requirements of isO-26262 standard automotive functional safety requirements. The application of lidar and loop-looking camera in two market segments reflects the above trend.
Make the lidar's "heartbeat" more robust
With the continuous improvement of intelligence and the requirement of unmanned 360-degree no-dead Angle monitoring, the number of sensors in cars is becoming more and more. According to Yole Developpement's prediction, sensors for self-driving vehicles will continue to grow rapidly at a 51% annual compound growth rate (CAGR) over the next 15 years. At present, there are three main types of sensors around the development of automatic driving: visual camera, millimeter wave radar and lidar. The three technologies have their own advantages and are difficult to replace each other.
Reliability has long been the focus of carmakers and suppliers of electronic systems. Compared with millimeter-wave radar and camera, lidar, which has such characteristics as high resolution, long distance and wide viewing Angle, and can even effectively identify non-metallic objects such as stones on the remote road surface, is very necessary for automatic driving, especially l3-L5 high-order automatic driving. For lidar which depends on precise timing, the MEMS oscillator provides a more robust "heartbeat".
Compared with the traditional quartz oscillator, the anti-vibration ability of the MEMS oscillator is increased by 5 times, the reliability is increased by 20 times, and the anti-impact ability is increased by 500 times. Another outstanding advantage of the MEMS oscillator is that it can maintain its frequency stability at high temperature. In addition, the MEMS oscillator is small and durable.
Both THE DSA11x1 and DSA11x5 introduced by Microchip are automotive MEMS oscillators and clock generators. They meet the AEC-Q100 standard and have excellent frequency stability (as low as ±20 PPM) in the temperature range from -40°C to +125°C, which can meet the application requirements of grade 1 of automotive electronic temperature grade.
These MEMS oscillators have a phase jther of less than 1 ps(typical value), operate at a frequency range of 2.3 MHz to 170 MHz, and are available in three industry-standard sizes of 2.5mm x 2.0mm, 3.2mm x 2.5mm, and 5.0mm x 3.2mm with a thickness of 0.85 mm.
Among these new MEMS oscillators coming out in line with AEC-Q100 Grade 1 are the industry dual-output MEMS oscillators, known as DSA2311. The oscillator is packaged in a 2.5mm x 2.0mm package, which replaces two crystal oscillators on the circuit board or other oscillators. The device's two synchronous CMOS outputs range from 2.3 MHz to 170 MHz. This can not only save PCB space, but also reduce procurement, inventory and installation costs, and improve product integration.
The future of car connectivity
The loop-looking camera system is a key component in many current ADAS applications, including lane departure warning, parking assistance, blind spot monitoring, pedestrian detection and adaptive cruise control, which can provide a bird 's-eye view of the vehicle's surroundings, improve passenger safety and realize automatic driving.
One of the key components of an effective loop camera system is high-speed connectivity. Microchip provides automotive Ethernet devices and INICnet? controllers that can be used to transmit video, data, and messages over a variety of forms of media.
According to McKinsey, automotive Ethernet will soon "rise to become the backbone of the car". Microchip's INICnet technology simplifies automotive infotainment networks by supporting Ethernet, audio, video, and control over a single cable.
INICnet technology can coexist with automotive Ethernet to seamlessly connect inter-vehicle domain data communication based on Internet Protocol (IP), while simultaneously providing efficient transmission of digital audio and compressed video data based on multiplex time division multiplexing (TDM) technology. And there are 50 Mbps and 150 Mbps two different speed levels, bandwidth efficiency up to 95%. Both options support ring or Daisy chain, with 50 Mbps implemented via unshielded twisted pair and 150 Mbps via coaxial cable. INICnet will become an open ISO standard in 2021.
For Ethernet channels with INICnet technology, the ISO/OSI model covers only the first two layers of the model, so it can be completely abstracted from the higher layers to implement common network communication code calls such as sockets after driver updates. Currently, The Ethernet channel driver for INICnet has open source support for Linux?, Android?, and QNX systems so that the Ethernet channel for INICnet technology can be integrated into existing SYSTEMS based on IP communications in a completely transparent manner. This way the development engineer doesn't have to worry about the underlying networking technology.
Yan Goh, Microchip Automotive Products Asia Pacific senior product marketing manager, said: "Communicating with automakers and component suppliers early in the product development cycle is critical for new connectivity technologies. This will ensure product compatibility and compliance with stringent automotive standards, enabling our customers to effectively apply our new products to their designs. Microchip is committed to providing efficient, stable and secure automotive networking solutions to meet the growing demand for data transmission in automotive electronics.
conclusion
Autonomous driving is an emerging market, including many new players from the non-traditional auto industry. Due to the lack of consensus industry requirements and the constant development of technology, we will face a series of challenges. This will require close collaboration between semiconductor suppliers and carmakers and parts suppliers to meet these changing needs.
At the same time, considering the function of security and network security is the important trend of the two, as in automotive level MCU and digital signal controller (DSC) manufacturer with a long history, the core competencies of the Microchip is able to provide the overall system solution, including MCU, DSC, FPGA, simulation products, connectivity and networking solutions, storage products, man-machine interface solutions and security products, and professional service and support, excellent quality and reliability, and leading delivery ability.