CIE Components in Electronics
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are quickly growing in popularity among consumers, driven in large part by a strong affinity for the functionality enabled by surround view cameras such as park assist and blind spot detection. According to ABI Research, the global ADAS market is forecast to reach US$261 billion by 2020, establishing ADAS as one of the fastest growing segments in the automotive sector.
In response, Freescale Semiconductor and Broadcom Corporation have partnered to create the Qorivva MPC5606E – Freescale’s first fully-integrated, packaged microcontroller (MCU) and physical layer transceiver (PHY) solution for use in 360 degree camera systems.
Camera size is increasingly important to automotive OEMS, as manufacturers prefer peripheral cameras to be miniaturised and unobtrusive. Smaller cameras can be more easily hidden within design features of the car, such as a front grill, bumper or wing mirror. Featuring a compact 8x8mm package, the Qorivva MPC5606E device is designed to reduce the size of automotive camera modules by up to 50 percent, while helping speed time to market and reduce the overall bill-of-material.
The size and performance advantages of the Qorivva MPC5606E are helped by the incorporation of Broadcom’s BroadR-Reach automotive Ethernet PHY. This integrated Ethernet solution enables compact vision compression and rapid transmission of video data throughout the vehicle.
Ethernet has emerged as a mainstream automotive network technology, allowing multiple in-vehicle systems to simultaneously access information over a single unshielded twisted pair cable at speeds of up to 100 Mbps. By eliminating cumbersome, shielded cabling, automotive manufacturers can reduce connectivity costs up to 80 percent and cabling weight up to 30 percent (source: Broadcom). These cost and weight reductions pave the way for the incorporation of surround view camera systems beyond the luxury class into higher volume, mid-range and economy vehicles.
“By leveraging Ethernet, a proven lower-cost, automotive-qualified solution for secure transmission of in-vehicle data, the next step is to make the technology even more attractive by enabling ADAS system integrators to dramatically reduce the footprint of their solutions,” said Davide Santo, Safety and Chassis Operations Manager for Freescale’s Automotive MCU Group. “Our collaboration with Broadcom resulted in a single, small-footprint solution that combines the image compression features of our Qorivva MPC5606E device with the time stamping and high performance transmission capabilities of the BroadR-Reach PHY.”
