Applying ADI's A2B to Design Audio Connectivity and Infotainment Applications

Analog Devices (ADI) and Hyundai Motor Group (HMC) are launching the automotive industry's first fully digital road noise cancellation system.
Hyundai Motor Company is broadly deploying ADI’s Automotive Audio Bus (A2B) technology in its basic audio connectivity and infotainment application designs.

The collaboration between ADI and HMC demonstrates the importance of A2B technology to automakers developing emerging wiring-intensive and latency-sensitive applications such as road noise cancellation, in-vehicle communications, personalized audio or sound zones.

“We saw the potential for A2B technology to be applied not only to Hyundai Motor Group’s Road-noise Active Noise Control (RANC) technology but also to other vehicle applications,” said Lee Kang-deok, a researcher at Hyundai Motor Group. “Thanks to the low latency of A2B technology, we were able to improve the riding experience for passengers and drivers while accelerating the implementation and mass production of RANC technology.”

The RANC system is a technology that significantly reduces road noise entering a vehicle's interior. It analyzes various types of road noise in real time and generates sound waves of the opposite phase to cancel them out. There are various types of road noise on the road, and the RANC system helps deal with various types of noise, such as resonance noise generated between tires and wheels or vibration noise generated from the road surface.

ADI’s A2B technology reduces cable weight by up to 75% while improving fuel efficiency and total system cost. It is a high-speed digital interconnect technology that transmits audio and control data along with clock and power over a single pair of unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cables with low latency.

Current automotive road noise cancellation systems are limited in their installation due to technical issues in efficiently connecting the required input sensors to the CPU. ADI’s A2B technology significantly reduces the associated wiring harness cost and complexity issues that arise during the installation of traditional analog-based road noise cancellation systems.

“Using A2B technology, we have been able to reduce vehicle weight and design complexity while improving overall fuel efficiency,” said Patrick Morgan, vice president, Automotive Electronics and Infotainment, ADI. “We are working with Hyundai to develop a fully digital RANC system that will help solve the technical challenges of electronic RANC systems.”