Autonomous Vehicles, ADSA and Infotainment Features Will Become Important
The trend of introducing serial links to quickly transmit large amounts of data

The 'Autonomous Driving Motor Show' held in Pangyo concluded last week. It showcased the progress of autonomous driving technology through events ranging from test drives to synchronized driving and obstacle races against human drivers. Many applicants flocked to the test drives and obstacle races, which were conducted via pre-registration.

What is the reason for such widespread interest in self-driving cars? It is said that 94% of traffic accidents are caused by human negligence. Consequently, there is an expectation that the introduction of autonomous driving will help reduce traffic accidents. Furthermore, being freed from the burden of driving allows people to use their travel time for other tasks, enabling more efficient use of time.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), which provide parking assistance, automatic braking, pedestrian detection, and collision avoidance functions, are being installed ahead of Level 5 fully autonomous vehicles. In Korea, a law came into effect this January mandating the installation of Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) on newly released passenger vans over 11 meters in length and large commercial vehicles exceeding 20 tons. The adoption of ADAS is becoming a widespread trend.

The key to an ADAS system is the rapid reception and processing of information from multiple cameras and sensors. This is because the vehicle's response must be determined in real time. In-vehicle camera systems generally boast very high data rates. In the case of a surround view system, each camera has a video stream with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and a frame refresh rate of 30 f/s.

Infotainment systems that need to process high-resolution video/audio data also cannot be without cameras. Future cars will require at least 19 serial links to transmit data from more than 12 cameras and multiple UHD displays.

Accordingly, Maxim Integrated supports the bandwidth, complex interconnectivity, and data integrity issues required by ADAS and infotainment systems with next-generation Gigabit Multimedia Serial Link (GMSL) Parallel-to-Serial Transmitter (SerDes) technology.

"Increasing bandwidth is the key to transmitting data quickly and securely," said Director Jaehoon Ahn of Maxim. "Currently, we have increased it to 6GHz to meet market needs. We will increase it to 9GHz and 12GHz in the future."

It was explained that not only bandwidth but also the number of cables must be reduced. GMSL SerDes technology simultaneously transmits HD video, audio, control information, integrated sensor data, and Gigabit Ethernet through a single 15m coaxial cable or a 10m to 15m Shielded-Twisted Pair (STP) cable.

GMSL technology supports machine vision technologies, such as object or pedestrian detection, quickly without compression. It is possible to transmit up to 4K video without additional contacts or ground wires.

Director Ahn emphasized, “Providing 15m as a single cable means it is highly resistant to noise. We provide the designed serial link so that it can be evaluated during the development phase. Customers can also test the voltage margin,” adding, “They say that if feed issues cannot be resolved with Maxim’s product, they won’t work with competitors’ either. That shows just how far ahead we are in reliability and EMC.”