In the never-ending battle to add more end-user value, the
focus among automotive component and car manufacturers
has turned to improving safety and control for vehicles. Driver
assistance, collision prediction and avoidance, lane-departure
warning, and electronic stability control (ESC) are just some of
the systems getting a lot of attention these days.
However, “value” isn’t the only driving force behind these
technological pursuits. Government mandates are putting the
hammer down on manufacturers. Many of these requirements
involve “greener” cars with higher fuel efficiency and reduced
harmful engine emissions.
Both automotive IC suppliers and tier 1 suppliers see potentially
large markets in automotive safety and control. All sorts
of active and passive safety systems are in the works. According
to several industry research firms, there’s large market potential
in automotive electronics for safety and control. In fact, sensors, actuators, microprocessors, memories,
field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), microcontrollers
(MCUs), and DSPs should see greater use in automotive
safety and control systems. The trend is to increase the use of
semiconductor ICs beyond control functions and into active
and passive safety systems.
Increased use of real-time vision systems for advanced safety
techniques has called for greater vision-processing capabilities.
By installing cameras on cars and using high-performance
image processors, auto manufacturers can implement systems
for lane tracking, traffic-sign recognition, and parking assistance.
When combined with radar, more robust obstacle detection
becomes possible.
Devices with highly parallel architectures like NEC’s IMPCAR
ASIC, with over 100 Goperations/s, allow for real-time,
multiple image-processing applications within the same chip.
Also, Analog Devices’ ADSP BF561 dual-core Blackfin processor
allows parallel execution of instruction streams on multiple
pieces of data, at a 600-MHz clock rate.
Microelectromechanical
systems (MEMS) will see wide use in safety, fuel-economy,
and convenience functions. “The need to consider the ‘system’ in
MEMS is key to the success in introducing many sensor functionalities
into vehicles,” says Roger Grace of Roger Grace Associates.
“This is clearly demonstrated by tire-pressure management
systems (TPMSs), where an application-specific IC (ASIC) can
provide many functions, including temperature compensation,
control, battery management, and possibly even the transmit function
to the display monitor in the vehicle cockpit,” Grace adds.
He also notes that a major obstacle for MEMS IC suppliers
of devices for safety, control, fuel-economy, and convenience
functions is to meet the enormous cost pressures imposed by car
manufacturers and tier 1 suppliers, while delivering 100,000-mile,
10-year parts lifetime performance.
The challenge for auto makers is to add enhanced safety, comfort,
and intelligence elements to their products while lowering
costs. As cars take on more sensors and microcontrollers, the move
is to implement “sensor fusion.” That involves integrating all of
these ICs into central modules, which ultimately reduces complexity,
lowers costs, and creates a safer driving experience.
Presently, many active and passive sensor and microcontroller
ICs work independently of one another. “With sensor fusion,
we’re trying to integrate things to reduce system complexity,” says
Markus Staeblin, product marketing manager for automotive
microcontrollers at Texas Instruments.
Marc Osajda, Freescale Semiconductor’s global automotive
marketing manager, concurs with this trend. He also sees MEMS
sensors enabling cost-effective and efficient ESC: “We see an
emerging trend of sensor fusion that integrates passive and active
systems for more intelligent vehicle control and a better understanding
of a car’s environment. There are developments ongoing
in sensor communications standardization to make all sensors
compatible with an electronic control unit (ECU).”
Working with tier 1 supplier Continental, Freescale developed
a custom MCU for ESC called SPACE (Superior Processor for
Automatic Control in Electronic braking). The 32-bit electronicbraking
system is said to be the industry’s first triple-core MCU
design to integrate Freescale’s Power Architecture e200 cores with
Continental’s fail-safe electronic braking system.
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