At present, China's auto industry is entering the era of "new four modernizations" represented by ADAS & Autonomous, Connected, Electrification and Shared Services. According to data from IHS Markit, by 2023, the total value of automotive electronic systems will reach 180 billion US dollars, and each car will use more than 500 US dollars of semiconductor devices on average. Powertrain) and in-vehicle infotainment system (Infotainment). Among them, ADAS ranked first with an increase of 23.6%.
The rapid growth of ADAS is partly due to the fact that automakers are working to improve the safety of their vehicles, developing new technologies to help reduce road accidents and ensure the safety of the connections inside the car. In the past few years, with the support of high-precision electronic sensors (lasers, radars and cameras), high-speed multi-core system-on-chip (SoC) supporting artificial intelligence, and high-speed in-vehicle networks, vehicle ADAS active safety systems have achieved a qualitative leap.
On the other hand, transportation regulators around the world, including China, have raised the bar in their respective safety regulations and requirements, which all vehicles must comply with. These all clearly show that China is paying more and more attention to ADAS active safety functions.
The driving force behind the "qualitative leap" is inseparable from the complex software and hardware processing capabilities, which are rapidly promoting fault protection engineering design to become one of the important standards in today's automotive industry. Automotive semiconductor suppliers such as Microchip have been committed to providing a wide range of microcontroller (MCU) and automotive networking solutions to meet ISO-26262 compliant automotive functional safety requirements. The application of the two market segments of lidar and surround view cameras reflects the above trends.
Make the "heartbeat" of lidar more stable
With the continuous improvement of the degree of intelligence and the requirement of 360-degree unmanned monitoring without dead angle, the number of sensors in the car is becoming more and more. According to forecasts by Yole Développement, sensors used in autonomous vehicles will continue to grow rapidly at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 51% over the next 15 years. At present, there are three main types of sensors developed around autonomous driving: visual cameras, millimeter-wave radars and lidars. The three technologies have their own advantages and are difficult to replace each other.
Reliability has always been a focus for automakers and electronic system suppliers. Compared with millimeter-wave radar and cameras, it has the characteristics of high resolution, long distance and wide viewing angle, and can even effectively identify non-metallic objects such as stones on the remote road surface. For autonomous driving, especially L3 to L5 level High-level autonomous driving is very necessary. For lidars that rely on precise timing, MEMS oscillators provide a more robust "heartbeat."
Compared with traditional quartz oscillators, MEMS oscillators have 5 times higher vibration resistance, 20 times higher reliability, and 500 times higher shock resistance. Another outstanding advantage is that they can withstand high temperatures. maintain its frequency stability. In addition, MEMS oscillators combine small size and robustness.
Microchip's DSA11x1 and DSA11x5 are automotive-grade MEMS oscillators and clock generators that are AEC-Q100 qualified and have excellent frequency stability (down to ±20°C) over a temperature range of -40°C to +125°C ppm), which can meet the application requirements of automotive electronics temperature class grade 1.
These MEMS oscillators feature less than 1 ps (typ) phase jitter, operate from 2.3 MHz to 170 MHz, and are available in industry-compliant 2.5 mm x 2.0 mm, 3.2 mm x 2.5 mm, and 5.0 mm x 3.2 mm Standard compact sizes are available, all with a thickness of 0.85 mm.
Among these new AEC-Q100 grade 1 compliant MEMS oscillators is the industry's dual-output MEMS oscillator, the DSA2311. Housed in a 2.5 mm x 2.0 mm package, this oscillator can replace two crystals or other oscillators on the board. The device's two simultaneous CMOS outputs range from 2.3 MHz to 170 MHz. This not only saves PCB space, but also reduces procurement, inventory and installation costs, and improves product integration.
The future of car connectivity
Surround-view camera systems are key components in many current ADAS applications, including lane departure warning, parking assist, blind-spot monitoring, pedestrian detection, and adaptive cruise control, providing a bird's-eye view of the vehicle's surroundings, improving passenger safety and enabling autonomous driving.
One of the key components of an effective surround-view camera system is high-speed connectivity. Microchip offers automotive-grade Ethernet devices and INICnet™ controllers that can be used to transmit video, data and messages over various forms of media.
According to McKinsey, automotive Ethernet will soon "rise to become the backbone of the car." Microchip's proprietary INICnet technology simplifies automotive infotainment networking by supporting Ethernet, audio, video and control over a single cable.
The INICnet technology can coexist with automotive Ethernet, seamlessly connecting Internet Protocol (IP)-based cross-vehicle domain data communications, while simultaneously providing multiple channels of Time Division Multiplexing (TDM)-based efficient transmission of digital audio and compressed video data in parallel. And there are two different speed levels of 50 Mbps and 150 Mbps, and the bandwidth efficiency is as high as 95%. Both options support ring or daisy chaining, with 50 Mbps over unshielded twisted pair and 150 Mbps over coax. INICnet will become an open ISO standard in 2021.
For the Ethernet channel of INICnet technology, its ISO/OSI model only covers the first two layers of the model, so it can be completely abstracted from the higher layer, and after updating the driver, common sockets such as sockets can be implemented Network communication code calls. Currently, INICnet's Ethernet channel driver has been open sourced to support Linux®, Android™ and QNX systems, so that the Ethernet channel of INICnet technology can be integrated into existing systems based on IP communication in a completely transparent manner. This way development engineers don't have to worry about the underlying networking technology.
"Communication with automakers and component suppliers early in the product development cycle is critical for new connectivity technologies," said Yan Goh, Asia Pacific Premier Product Marketing Manager, Microchip's Automotive Products Division. "This will ensure product compatibility. And comply with strict automotive standards, so that our customers can effectively apply our new products to their designs. Microchip has always been committed to providing efficient, stable and secure automotive network solutions to meet the ever-increasing needs of automotive electronics. Growing demand for data transfer.”
Epilogue
Autonomous driving is an emerging market that includes many new players from non-traditional automotive industries, and we will face a number of challenges due to the lack of agreed-upon industry requirements and the ever-evolving technology. This requires close cooperation between semiconductor suppliers and automakers and component suppliers in order to meet these changing demands.
At the same time, considering that functional safety and network security are two important trends at present, as a manufacturer with a long history in automotive-grade MCUs and digital signal controllers (DSCs), Microchip's core competitiveness lies in the ability to provide total system solutions, Including MCUs, DSCs, FPGAs, analog products, connectivity and networking solutions, memory products, HMI solutions and security products, as well as professional service and support, outstanding quality and reliability, and delivery capabilities second to none.