Automotive / Transportation Forum

The electronic systems for both safety and engine control are adding new features continuously

CONVENED AND MODERATED BY JIM HARRISON

Automotive and transportation electronic systems continue to get more complex and capable. You really have to have an automotive expert to understand the trends. In late February we gathered seven experts in this application area and asked them for there insights and perspectives.

Electronic Products: I think we’ll start with engine control. Roger Forchhammer of STMicrosystems, your company is involved with the engine control processors?

Roger Forchhammer (Business Development Manager, STMicroelectronics) : Yes, for sure we do. One of the main pillars in our microcontroller strategy is engine control.

Electronic Products: And, what is some of the latest technology there? How many processors are there in a typical engine right now?

Roger Forchhammer : Well, it varies. If you just look at the engine controller, it could be one. And if you spread it out to an engine and the transmission, either one or two, so you can also integrate that. But if we just look at the pure engine controller itself, it’s mainly one microcontroller. In the past, to achieve the performance need, it was more, but nowadays it’s going into one.

Electronic Products: And that one is a 32-bit processor?

Roger Forchhammer : It’s a 32-bit microcontroller, yes.

Murtaza Fidaali (Director of Business Development, Transportation/Medical Markets, ITT Interconnect Solutions) : ITT developed, with Continental Service (which used to be Motorola), a connector system for the ECU [engine control unit], a landed contact system. You don’t need two sizes of connectors. It can have connector molded into the box itself, and the pads would be on the PCB, and the connector has landed contacts.

Electronic Products : So there are no pins?

Murtaza Fidaali : There are no pins and sockets pieces at all.

Electronic Products : And what’s the advantage of that?

Murtaza Fidaali : The advantage is you eliminate the receptacle connector. It’s already molded into it and the pads are on the PCB itself. It’s reduced costs. It’s very small. It’s concise, because we have made a 180-pin connector system for them, which normally, with the pin and socket, would be almost 40% larger.

Electronic Products : How does it seal? It must be the most rugged environment around under that hood, so how do you keep that sealed and clean?

Murtaza Fidaali : It’s still sealed because the connector is sealed with the O rings and so the dust and all that is not an issue at all.

Electronic Products : Great. Anybody else comment on under-hood engine control?

Adrian Hill (Automotive Business Development Manager, Melexis) : One of the things that I believe should be considered is that now, besides a main CPU, there are many other applications which have embedded MCUs in applications such as sensors, EGR actuators, throttle body valve control.

Rather than the engine control algorithm being embedded in the microcontroller, we’re seeing a lot of intelligent sensors and actuators distributed under the hood which have algorithms for processing those sensors data before it is sent to the ECU, so no longer is the ECU seeing raw data; it’s seeing processed data.

Roger Forchhammer : Yes, Adrian thank you very much for going in that direction. I wanted to say that besides the engine controller itself, we see a lot of distributed functionality in other areas, like Adrian already mentioned the EGR. Also variable valve control systems, which have an MCU inside to process the signals of the control motor, and turbochargers. You have distributed-processing systems that then feed to the main micro.

Electronic Products : Okay, so the turbocharger has its own processor?

Roger Forchhammer : It depends on how it’s implemented. If it’s an electrical turbocharger, yes.

Adrian Hill : Just to give an example of how deep your can drill and find MCUs, the pressure sensor applications, which we’re familiar with, just a simple pressure sensor, many of these now achieve high accuracy across the automotive temperature ranges by using and embedded MCU, either to process the membrane data which is coming off the resistive bridge, or even just to do the sensor interface activity.

Electronic Products : That’s typically an 8-bit processor for those?

Adrian Hill : We actually have a variety of applications with both 8- and 16-bit. We see 8 bit in applications like the pressure sensor. If we look at the three-dimension positioning that is used in either joystick control or in the pedals and the throttle EGI valve, that tends to be 16 bit.

Electronic Products : So any other applications under hood, especially ones that might be improving our fuel economy with $4 gas prices around the bend?

Terry Pence (Senior Manager, Automotive Product Marketing, Actel) : One of the areas that we’ve been focused on is the consolidation of chips within the engine module, and in particular, reducing the power. Reducing the power has the effect of increasing reliability, as the whole system runs cooler. and it reduces the load on the alternator.

Roger Forchhammer : Just looking at fuel economy, actually from the semiconductor or component standpoint, from our side, we provide the systems that can improve fuel economy. This is embedded in the system itself and in the way the engine is controlled, like valve control and GDI or ACCDI is another way to run an engine, and that can bring up to 15% fuel saving.

Mike Wills (Automotive Business Development Manager, OPTEK Technology) : That’s exactly what we’re seeing too. Like the turbochargers for performance and economy. With the sequential and parallel arrangements that they are setting up now to control it over the wide temperature range, and that’s where we’re seeing the demand for the sensors is the feedback loops using the semiconductors these guy’s are supplying, but packaging that into the in the sensors.

Electronic Products : In the sensor area, is there a need now for higher precision than there was before?

Mike Wills : There is. Higher precision, but I think one of the bigger drivers is the temperature range, and being able to achieve running at upwards of 150°C and maintaining that for the life of the vehicle. It’s not been an easy challenge to meet some of those requirements, because soak temperatures go much higher than that.

Richard White (Automotive Marketing Manager, ON Semiconductor) : We’re seeing the same thing. We provide a lot of the power management solutions that surround the micro, and we’re seeing the need to support temperature up to 150°C.

Electronic Products : So 150 is the target? Obviously long-term reliability is certainly an issue, and cars are getting a lot better in that area, and I’m sure there’s a lot of pressure on you to meet those reliability goals, right?

Terry Pence : Yes. One of the things that’s important is, as the technology for semiconductors shrinks, there is a challenge to keep the reliability up. Usually, as they reduce channel width, there is higher leakage or breakdown of the dielectric, breakdown of the aluminum interconnect, and so that is one area that’s becoming a challenge. The requirements are going up at the same time the technology isn’t quite as robust as you go from 90 to 65.

Electronic Products : And in that area, are you doing 150°C, or are you sticking to 65°?

Terry Pence : No, 150°C.

Murtaza Fidaali : One comment I want to make Jim is that a lot of people talked about high temperature, and we see connectors requirements for high power and high voltage. They are talking about 300-A current ratings. And, we need more and more high temperature materials for this application. Now a metalized connector is what we are using, but we want to get into the high temperature plastics.

Roger Forchhammer : On the high temperature, we see the same requirements going up to 150°, or even sometimes exceeding that. For the MCU or the embedded flash, this is really a challenging factor, because if you look at the right/erase rate cycles that you want to achieve there at high temperature, this is impossible to guarantee over a lifetime.

Roger Forchhammer : But this is dependent on the temperature. You will never be able to achieve 100,000 write/erase cycles for flash at 150°. Your device will fail.

Electronic Products : Yeah, but what about some of the new memory technology? MRAM and other ones? Are they better?

Roger Forchhammer : Well, we don’t see those yet in the microcontroller systems or embedded systems for automotive.

Electronic Products : One more thing in the engine control area. We don’t have anybody here from General Motors or Toyota or Ford or, but if they were here, what would they ask for right now? Their wish list.

Richard White : More reliable components. From our perspective, we are talking about failure rates of parts per billion instead of parts per million. We’re also doing component-level EMI testing, and we do failure-mode testing, including repetitive testing.

Murtaza Fidaali : From a connector perspective GM and Ford are looking for modularity of the connector system, so they could easily remove pins — let’s say instead of 180 pins they only need 160. Or, if they want a hybrid connector which could have power or signal, they could do that, since it’s a modular connector.

Adrian Hill : I think one of the things that we’ve noticed, and it speaks a little bit to the previous discussion of microcontrollers for engine control or a transmission control, and now we see that becoming a single controller linked by a multiplex system. I think the OEMs are getting a lot more sophisticated when it comes to looking at system costs, rather than just individual component costs. And they’re really understanding more and more the added value of adding distributed electronics with some intelligence.

One of the key things we see now is things like water pumps, fuel pumps, oil pumps, even the cooling fan on the engine having intelligent controls. These are all power-specific devices in terms of the electrical load on the vehicle, which has an impact on the as mileage, as well as the addition of BLDC motors with an integrated BLDC controller.

This is now we’re adding intelligence to these previously mechanical system elements and that can really bring a benefit to the overall vehicle, and even though it’s an added component cost, the system costs are better and your gas mileage targets really benefit.

Terry Pence: That’s similar to what we’ve seen, the distributed system feeding into a central one. I know we have requests from the larger automotive guys to add more I/O so they can control more of these signals coming into the distributed modules.

Electronic Products : You’re talking about discreet I/O, not networking.

Terry Pence : These are built into the FPGA, that would then connect to those networks.

Roger Forchhammer : There’s also a tradeoff there because, as we’ve discussed with those guys, it is about going to bigger memory. I have to speak for microcontrollers because I’m not an FPGA guy, but looking at MCUs, we’re getting to a limit now. We’re looking at BGA packages with 416 pins. And it’s getting problematic handling them. So the more distributed system might see a rebirth. And, a lot of distributed systems will appear in—as already mentioned—fuel pumps, oil pumps, the HVAC system. Just to reduce the amount of pins on the main controller.

Electronic Products : Roger, that takes some of the load then off of the main CPU, you’re saying?

Roger Forchhammer : Right, but nevertheless, the main CPU will still have an increased need of performance. For next-generation engine control units we’re looking at 162-, 200-MHz processors, 4 Mbytes of flash, and dual-core architectures.

Electronic Products : Okay. And then one last thing on the engine control and then we’ll move on to safety. What about networking in the engine control area? What’s the current state of the art and what’s coming up?

Mike Wills : I’m not seeing it as much in the engine as in the safety area. We can get there in a minute, but we are beginning to see designers going to more networking, going to 2-pin devices with a PWM type of output, versus an analog output, reducing pin count, getting more accuracy, and a little bit more range. Not from every OEM, but certainly some OEMs are moving that way.

Roger Forchhammer : From our standpoint, in the engine compartment or the powertrain, it’s still mainly a CAN-based system.

Richard White : I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Roger Forchhammer : The other option is going to FlexRay, but we’re going to talk about that I think a little bit later in chassis and safety then.

Electronic Products : Okay, so safety is where the FlexRay is showing up. I thought it was under the hood already, but typically not. Is FlexRay going to be in the engine control soon?

Terry Pence : I don’t think so.

Richard White : I don’t either.

Owen Camden (Automotive Program Manager, C&K Components) : We’ve had a couple of applications in the safety area. In European product, in high-end vehicles, they’re moving to electronic braking, and we’re on electronic park brake systems now, where the demand for very fast switching is one we’re seeing right now. We, at C&K, specialize in electromechanical switches and they’re not typically known for very quick response, but the customers that we’re catering to for this application are requiring 15-ms change over from state to state, so we’re challenged in electromechanical systems to keep up the speed that the electronics world is demanding.

Electronic Products : I see, and you said that’s for the parking brake only, not for the general braking systems?

Owen Camden : Right. The general braking system is probably sensor driven, where the parking brake is operator input is required. So an electro-mechanical switch would come into play in that system.

Electronic Products : So that is going to be a pushbutton on the dash, Owen?

Owen Camden : Yes it is.

Terry Pence : It’s already there in many cars.

Electronic Products : Oh, I’m getting behind.

Terry Pence : A lot of the newer Audis are already equipped with that. A lot of the cars in Europe.

Owen Camden : The high-end European cars kind of lead the way there. And that type of system will, of course, will get rid of many of the existing mechanical systems in the park brake, the cables and linkages, and save weight.

Electronic Products : There seems to be so many areas to talk about in the safety. Who wants to jump in there?

Richard White : There are a lot of areas that we can talk about. We have adaptive cruise control, rollover and stability control, lane departure, back-up aids, rear-mirror cameras, adaptive headrests, blind spot detection. Is there any place you want to start?

Electronic Products : Adaptive cruise control. [a system to keep a set distance behind the car in front of you – ed].

Richard White : You were asking earlier whether or not we thought that adaptive cruise control was a convenience thing, and at this point I think it is, but I can see definitely down the road it could become mainstream very easily, as long as the cost is in line to allow it to do so.

The other thing is, right now, suppliers of this type of system are really trying to distance themselves from this being a safety feature, but it really has a lot of potential to integrate with other types of features like crash warning and braking to avoid collisions, and also eventually collisions with pedestrians.

Electronic Products : Okay, so what sort of sensors are we using, Rich, with adaptive cruise control?

Richard White : We require a number of different external and internal sensors and, as far as detecting how close you are, an then you have a preset distance as to when you’d want to slow down.

Really, the nice thing about the system right now is that as you are coming up on a vehicle, it would slow you down. You can then look to see if there’s anyone coming in the passing lane, move over and then it automatically accelerates, so again, from a convenience thing, I think it’s a really nice system right now.

Electronic Products : And we have something like four or five cars now that have that already, right?

Richard White : There’s several in production out there.

Roger Forchhammer : Talking about ACC (adaptive cruise control), I totally agree. ACC today I also see as a convenience thing. It’s just like a worry-free cruising. You press the button and everything goes by itself, but I wouldn’t consider it today as a safety system. It is moving in the right direction, to make it a safety system. Add a couple of different components, forward-viewing systems, either radar or vision-based systems that can predict a situation or identify objects, like pedestrians, and warn the driver. That is going to come into a safety system, and with this you have additional safety improvements, and not only for the driver or for the vehicle, but also for pedestrians.

Electronic Products : So you said the sensors are either optical or radar. For the adaptive ones that are out there right now, are they radar?

Roger Forchhammer : Well, currently there are a lot of radar-based ACC systems. What I’m talking about with radar and vision is more the forward-viewing systems that can detect pedestrians as well as road sign recognition, lane departure, or lane recognition. These systems combined with the standard ACC will be a huge improvement in safety.

Electronic Products : And those are mostly visual, with the standard ACC being radar?

Roger Forchhammer : It’s radar, yeah.

Electronic Products : Okay, and I think adaptive cruise control is a safety issue because I’m not going to have as many tailgaters. If those folks go back to the right distance, I think that would be a great safety advantage, don’t you?

Roger Forchhammer : Yes, but a safety advantage would be if it would intervene into the vehicle or the driver’s behavior and brake.

And this is a thing that I think all the lawyer’s still have to answer, if a system like that can intervene for the driver and brake the vehicle by itself. I mean, the adaptive cruise control today slows down the vehicle, but in a critical situation will it hit the brakes? I don’t see that today.

Electronic Products : Does anybody have a forecast for when that might happen?

Roger Forchhammer : Well, ask the lawyers.

Electronic Products : I didn’t get a lawyer on the panel. That was my mistake. Sorry about that.

Richard White : That is a good point. It really is a liability thing. There’s a lot of concern with this particular system right now being positioned as a safety system.

Electronic Products : Okay. Who’s making the sensors?

Roger Forchhamme r: We’re working on the radar systems. We have some products that are in design, as well as we’re cooperating with other companies for vision-based systems.

Electronic Products : And the systems that are already out there, they’re pretty complicated, pretty complex?

Roger Forchhammer : Yes. Usually you see a DSP inside to do the computation.

Adrian Hill : We have some camera technology, which we are looking into for the safety application. And one thing that we’ve seen is, again, distributed electronics. There are some camera applications out there in the rest of the industry, more consumer led where you’re looking for an image to put on a screen, whereas what we see with the automotive safety applications is you’re looking for a machine vision-type function most of the time.

The important parameter is to try and shift that image data out in a usable way, including a good control over your dynamic range with the different lighting effects you have in the real world into a DSP, and I think one of the things we’ve seen is by having intelligent pixels, and that literally means having each pixel on a SVGA-type camera device having it’s own dynamic control, you can really reduce the DSP-processing power required to be able to get usable machine data.

The more important thing, that is not always apparent, is where you mount a camera. Often a good place is up near the rear view mirror on the overhead console, but this is not always a good place to mount a DSP, because you typically have a fairly high sun load up there, and therefor you can struggle with running DSPs in a 105°C environment. So then you have a data communication issue, and to get a high bit stream down from that point can be a bigger issue than even the processing of the rate itself. So to have some intelligent sensing up there, which can already precondition the data, let’s say is a real useful thing I think.

Terry Pence : That’s one of the areas that we see a mix of the analog moving into the digital world with mixed signal-type FPGAs, and part of that is to address adding a little bit of intelligence at those nodes by adjusting the low-pass filters and the sampling rates. So you can make a lot of intelligent decisions, because it’s basically taking an analog world and interfacing it to digital. So a lot of that can be done now at those end nodes.

Electronic Products : So the temperature requirements for the safety system, is it the same for the engine system, 150°C?

Terry Pence : It tends to be less. It all depends on where they’re going. If you‘re in a traction control area and they’re located next to the brakes or the shock absorbers it will be higher, but if it’s located in the back or front or overhead, then it would be a lower requirement.

Roger Forchhammer : Especially when we talk about the vision systems, this is very sensitive to temperature, so you want to place it as far away as possible from any heat source, which is a problem if you mount it on the rear view mirror with direct sunlight.

We are developing imagers in that are that have high dynamic range for these applications.

Adrian Hill : I think that was exactly my point, that if you take a typical camera device which is out there for a cell pone or a VCR and you try and implement that kind of sensor technology, it really can’t live in that temperate range and because of that all of Malexis camera devices that we have now for automotive have this dynamic range control on chip so we can qualify the part for up to 125 C.

Electronic Products : And so the camera systems right now in cars are used for back up imagers on lots of cars, and then they have imaging for the automatic parking systems.

Those are cameras. Is there any other camera applications used right now?

Roger Forchhammer : We are going into production this year with major OEMs on image-forward, looking imagers for lane departure.

Electronic Products : So you’re going to watch the stripe, basically?

Roger Forchhammer : Yes. It’s starting production this year, so we’ll see the vehicles hit the road at the end of the year.

Electronic Products : Okay, great. What is the next topic for safety? What is the cost of components for a tire pressure monitoring system and is it worth it?

Murtaza Fidaali : We work with TRW on this program, and they are really driving this cost down on this TPMS program. They’re using an aluminum stem with the PCB mounted inside that housing. We are working with them to drive the cost down by using rubber stem, as well as putting the antenna inside the stem. it’s cost effective.

Richard White : The TPMS pays for itself. I don’t know about you, but before tire pressure monitoring systems, I never gave it much thought to the tires unless I had a flat tire.

There’s been studies that indicate considerable tire wear for under-inflated or over-inflated tires, so the cost of the TPMS system is less than a hundred bucks, and for that over the life of your car it’s going to pay for itself.

Electronic Products : So it’s a hundred dollars for the end user, and the bill of materials cost is down considerably from that.

Richard White : It’s definitely less tan a hundred dollars.

Electronic Products : Okay, so these are all wireless, right?

Murtaza Fidaali : All wireless.

Electronic Products : What flavor of wireless is it?

Adrian Hill : Typically, what you see is dependent on market. It’s using a different RF band. The TPMS chips that we have operate either at the 315-MHz or 400- MHz range, depending on whether it’s for a European or U.S. application.

One of the things which I think is really maybe a hidden benefit the TPMS requirement is that it’s mandating that the each vehicle have an RF function in the central body control. And that means that then there are some added convenience functions like key-less entry and passive entry. They can all basically be spun off that for significantly less than they would otherwise cost if they were the only reason for that RF system to be in place.

Terry Pence : One of the other benefits, of course, besides just the costs of the tires, is really in safety, and with the push for greater gas mileage too, so you can see there’s multiple benefits for TPMS. And I can see in the future where they would actually integrate it into the safety system in that it potentially would limit the speed once it senses that the tires are not filled to a level that would be safe for the vehicle. There’s actually a lot of potential for this.

Roger Forchhammer : We see today requests to have a dedicated RF system. As one of the previous speakers said, there’s a module inside the vehicle that handles all the RF. If it’s keyless entry, the GPMS systems, or whatever, it will be in a central module somewhere in the vehicle.

Electronic Products : Since most of them already had an RF system for the keyless entry, it’s sort of an adjunct to that. Is that right?

Roger Forchhammer : Well, it’s an addition and we talked about in the power train application already. It’s a distributed system, so off-loading a body control system and putting it in an RF subsystem.

Electronic Products : Okay. So is there a central computer for the body control that’s then connected to the engine control, or how does that work?

Roger Forchhammer : Well, through a gateway they all are connected to each other.

Electronic Products : Using CAN?

Roger Forchhammer : It depends on the vehicle architecture, but generally the engine control unit are connected via CAN to a gateway controller, which is then connected to a body control or whatever kind of a subsystem it’s hanging onto it. And, either you have a gateway, a cluster, or you have a dedicated gateway that distributes all the signals on various physical layers.

Electronic Products : Roger is there any fiber optic yet?

Roger Forchhammer : In the media area, yes, but we’re not talking about multimedia.

Electronic Products : So that’s funny. The higher performance goes to the multimedia.

Roger Forchhammer : Well, that’s just because of the data through-put that you need for media systems.

Electronic Products : Okay, so the rest of it though, it seems like a great place for fiber optics for noise immunity and so forth, and safety, but that’s not being implemented now. Do you see that eventually for the control systems?

Roger Forchhammer : Currently not.

Terry Pence : The only place where I could see the large benefit, besides immunity, would be the weight of the vehicle. The plastic fiber optics that are being used in the media systems are fairly lightweight, so unless they go RF and eliminate most of the cabling in the car or some form of wireless this would be a good alternative. I think it’s probably the temperature is going to be one of the larger issues with it.

Electronic Products : Okay, what else in the safety area?

Terry Pence : There is a move to mandate stability control. And yeah, I think, it’s needed. Vehicles today have gotten heavier and to some degree taller, especially in the U.S. with the SUVs. And it’s really the only way to add safety back into it and take it somewhat out of the control of the driver.

Richard White : This is again another system where you can add the capability to an existing ABS system really cheap. National Highway Safety Administration estimated I think it’s around a hundred dollars.

Electronic Products : For stability control?

Richard White : Yes.

Electronic Products : That takes quite a bit of processing and quite a bit of DSP, I would think, but it seems to be so universal now.

Roger Forchhammer : For the ESC a 32-bit microcontroller can do the job fairly well. And I also agree that the stability control system won’t be a single ECU system or a box in the vehicle. It’s going to be integrated with other functionalities for a vehicle dynamic control system, with ABS, traction control, and things like that.

Mike Wills : I agree with that. We’re working on chassis ride height sensing that ties into that, but it also ties into the steering, ABS, and a number of other systems that really drive the whole stability control system.

Terry Pence : You have to be able to sense the pitch and yaw and wheel angle. There’s just a whole host of things that have to be sensed and processed and acted upon.

Electronic Products : Oh that’s right. I was thinking about all the processing, but really the sensing that is probably the main thing.

Roger Forchhammer : Sensors are the main component of this ESRV vehicle stability control system. And, you can do a lot of things with a vehicle stability control system, even with active intervention into the steering. So the driver is doing something and the system calculated that it’s not going to bring the desired results in a critical situation. It could, theoretically, intervene and steer against it. But again, that’s a question about how the liability going to be handled.

Electronic Products : That’s a good point. So right now the stability control is only working on the brakes, or what is it working on?

Terry Pence : It works on brakes; it also works on the shocks. A lot of the high-rank cars are going to magnetic fluid shocks, and so once they sense the pitch and the yaw, they can apply that to the shock absorbers to stiffen them up to keep the rolling in check.

Electronic Products : And this is a fast dynamic sort of thing?

Terry Pence : Right, that is correct.

Electronic Products: Okay, but right now they do work on braking on the individual wheels.

Terry Pence : Right, so that is the main way.

Roger Forchhammer : And that’s why I’m saying it is interacting with the ABS and integrated with the ABS system.

Adrian Hill : I think you mentioned about the safety requirements becoming more of the sensors themselves, and I think it is interesting that there have been, of course, components in the vehicles, such as the throttle and the brake peddle, which traditionally were mechanical components and now have electronics for sensing. The nice thing about these applications is they tend to have a well defined safe mode.

So, for example, in throttle control, it’s a limp home mode where if for some reason the electronics portion of the system goes down, you just run the engine somewhere above idle to be able to limp the vehicle home.

Now what we’re seeing more is a sensor requirement, which is determining the available signal. With-in the electronics system, at any one given failure point, there still has to be an available signal, and available meaning also you have to be able to perform a reliability check on that signal.

So this is obviously important in steer-by-wire, brake-by-wire, but also it is in the transmission system. Most people don’t realize that if you have a shift by wire system, there is no safe redundant position for a transmission system. For example, if the system is in park and you don’t know what position the user wants the shift lever position to be, you can’t simply just put it into neutral to or drive.

We’re working on multiple redundancy systems for sensors, which is really I think, a new area on a lot of the implementations for sensors. For example, the pedal the throttle position that Malexis has in production has two dies in a given package, which allows redundant outputs.

So you end up having to have multiple sensors all with redundant power supplies and then you can basically operate, depending on the OEM requirement, a voting system based on the output to understand which is the available signal that you will be using.

Electronic Products : Right. Maybe it will automatically call one of those attorneys and ask for advice.

Roger Forchhammer : And also from the microcontroller side there is a very strong trend to having higher safety integration levels in the MCU, and we’re working very closely with OEMs and developing microcontrollers dedicated to safety applications. There is an industrial standard IAC 61508, and this is now being tailored to automotive. And our 32-bit family is following this and we’re bringing peripherals and functionality into it to have safety integration and integrity levels according to these guidelines from the ISO.

Electronic Products : So Roger STMicro make any 8-bit microcontrollers that are automotive targeted?

Roger Forchhammer : Absolutely. We just recently announced a new 8-bit microcontroller family for automotive, as well as a new 32-bit power PC architecture family.

Electronic Products : And any 16-bit processors used in automotive?

Roger Forchhammer : Well, that’s currently our bread and better device now, the 16-bit SC10 family.

Electronic Products : Is there anything new in safety that you see coming up in the next two years?

Adrian Hill : There’s new sensing technology which I think we could start to hear more and more about, and that’s time of flight technology for optical sensing. A number of the applications we talked about for safety are looking outside the vehicle, such as front object detection and side object detection when you’re looking at lane change.

Up until now this is typically required stereo vision to be able to give, the same as a human being, depth perception. And the time of flight technology, by using the propagation delay of light, is able to provide depth perception directly.

Electronic Products : Must take horrendous processing to do optical time of fight, I’m sure.

Adrian Hill : I think the secret in doing time of flight is to have a camera IC which is intelligent enough to be able to do the dynamic range control locally, and also you have to have an array of LEDs, or a single point LED, which can provide that pause control light source.

And if that has to be done from a central control or somewhere embedded in the middle of the vehicle rather than be done locally where your camera is mounted, then of course the data stream you have to have is really incredible. So, I think to meet automotive cost targets, time of flight is going to depend on having that local sensing and control of the phasing to be able to give real depth matrix data.

Terry Pence : Another area of safety that we still a lot of development going on is the lighting, the headlights. The intelligent lighting. So, you know, the Lexus for some time has had steer around bends. Now the move is around steer around corners. Sensing whether there is car in front of you to either raise the beams or lower the beams and all that with feedback from a camera system.

Richard White : Also with cameras, blind spot detection.

Roger Forchhammer : Jim, just another point on what’s coming up next in the few years for safety. And one thing we haven’t touched here is advanced driver systems with pedestrian detection. This protection will come. I’m pretty convinced about that.

Electronic Products : Is that visual or radar?

Roger Forchhammer : Visual. Because with a visual system you can identify if the person is approaching you. You have to detect if the pedestrian is a problem or not. If he’s approaching you or going away out of your line of travel. You have to detect that and determine if that’s going to be a problem or not, so that has to be an optical system.

Another point that I see coming is vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure. So, communication to other vehicles to identify if there a threat there, was there a crash or around the corner, is there a crash or icy conditions on the road. This information can be patched from vehicle to vehicle help make decisions about the behavior of the vehicle.

Electronic Products : And, give us some idea of a time frame for that?

Roger Forchhammer: Well, we’re currently working on that. There’s no standard currently out there. I think they’re pretty close to identifying a standard for that. But as long as there’s no really standard, I don’t see that happening pretty soon. I would assume somewhere in the second half of the next decade.

Electronic Products : So a good 10 years away then. Okay, so then the general chassis systems. Owen what areas does C&K play in?

Owen Camden : We have products in hybrid vehicles. We’re engaged with a nickel metal hydride battery vendor. And we are making it so that their product is safe to operate when it’s being engaged by repair people. It’s a detection switch or a sensing switch.

Electronic Products : Is there anything in particular in hybrid that you see electronic technology aiding a abetting here in the future?

Richard White : My opinion is fuel-cell technology is going to provide the biggest boost to hybrids.

Roger Forchhammer : We are working on this area too, especially on the power module side. And personally, I think we will see in the future many more hybrid electrical vehicles on the market. GM is announcing new two mode hybrids. There are two key factors that I see for a success for hybrids. Batteries is for sure one, and the second one is power modules, and we are working in that area.

In the power modules, the IGBTs is a key point. From today’s perspective, all IGBTs are commonly used in hybrid electrical vehicles are derived from industrial applications, like trains, forklifts, or whatever. They’re not really suitable for automotive applications.

Electronic Products : What’s the difference there?

Roger Forchhammer : Packaging, temperature, reliability, and quality.

Richard White : Also there is a requirement for higher voltages, isn’t there?

Roger Forchhammer : Well, that’s already available. The industrial IBGTs go up to 1,200 V. Currently, it’s 600 V in that area that we need, or perhaps up to 800 and 1,000 V for the hybrid vehicle. But with current in the 200-A range.

Adrian Hill : And because up until now, automotive engineering in general has been a case of trying to manage fuel. And now the same groups of people realize that part of their job is managing current, and managing current is what really makes a hybrid vehicle effective or not, whether it’s the regenerative braking or managing the battery.

So we’ve seen some pretty incredible requirements moving forward with hybrid vehicles for current sensing, not only for driving the three phase motors, but also in battery monitoring, because you really must understand the current flowing into and out of your battery much more effectively than you’ve ever done before.

Roger Forchhammer : The balancing of the batteries themselves is important, otherwise you will not be able to achieve the reliability and quality requirements.

Electronic Products : One of the good things, I think, out of the hybrid movement is that even though it has lot more of electronics than previous cars have had, it’s been extremely reliable. So electronics has won out there, reliability wise.

Terry Pence : I agree with you about the amount of electronics growing. I think areas where they’re starting to get more pressure is to have parts that have lower power usage. When you only have one or two modules to deal with, saving a few milliamps didn’t matter, but now as cars approach five or six modules in a car, saving 5 or 6 mA per module has a significant impact on battery life, reliability. It just ripples through the entire production chain.

Mike Wills : That is very true. I can attest to that. That’s the other pressure we’re constantly under besides the higher temperature, reduced consumption of power.

Terry Pence: Now with the hybrid systems coming along and batteries becoming key, their learning how to work with that, they’re focusing much more on that.

Adrian Hill : Sleep current as well the operating current are big issues, and especially if the cars get more and more networked together in the body electronics, making sure that you can wake up and send to sleep various distributed modules to effectively manage your power consumption is really important.

And I think one other thing to understand is that in a hybrid, when the engine is stopped you still need to generate some cooling from the HVAC system. One of the things that we’ve been seeing is that HVAC systems that have compressors which are going to run without being connected to the engine really need a much higher efficiency, especially in terms of the motor which drives them.

And that may well be one of the big pushers to get highly efficient BLDC motors in the vehicle.

Roger Forchhammer : I would like to add on that too. The oil pressure for the transmission has to be up too, so for an HEV you need an electrical oil pump just for the transmission.

Electronic Products : Is there anything outside of automotive? Because are covering automotive and transportation. So would anybody like to comment on other transportation areas where electronics is having an impact?

Roger Forchhammer : If you look at the market for IGBTs worldwide, you have about 1.8 B euros of IGBTs in industrial applications, and today about $300 million in automotive applications. This covers IGBTs for injection drivers an other things.

But moving down the road with more HEVs coming on the market, I see the cost of IGBTs falling. In 2012, the estimates say that about 2.2 B euros are spent on automotive IGBTs, compared to 2.3 B for industrial, so there’s a huge volume for these devices and it could have an impact also for electric trains and metro systems.

Electronic Products : So for the hybrid motor, there’s not FETs involved in that; it’s all IGBTs because of voltage?

Roger Forchhammer : Yes, there are power FETs involved too for the ancillary actuators and electrical motors, but for the main traction controller it is an IGBT because of the high-power demands.

Mike Wills : I think from the sensing side we’re seeing more and more inquiry also from the agricultural markets, small engine markets, etc., because they’re being driven more toward electric drives, for example, replacing small engine lawnmower-type equipment.

Adrian Hill : Where we’re starting to see some unexpected opportunity is in general, commercial aviation, and military. Where you have a growing number of electronic devices, which are used really as aides, and are not certified. And things like pressure sensors, gyroscopes.

Terry Pence : In the commercial vehicle market, one area that we see driving quite large volumes is the telematics, especially on the top of the semi trailers so they can be networked and tracked and monitored.

Then that’s moving into buses for the transportation for the city metro trains, so you’re going to see the telematics on almost every piece of equipment. It’s the tracking and the monitoring of the fleets that are out there.

Electronic Products : What about LED for head lights, etc.

Richard White: From our perspective, we see LED tail lights, but also head lights being adopted much faster than what a lot of the analysts say.

Mike Wills : I agree with that.

Richard White : We’re developing products in those areas to help drive those LEDs, and managed the current capabilities of them.

Terry Pence : I believe LEDs will come on much faster, too, mostly because of the weight and the efficiency. So there’s a lot of advantages to going to LEDs.

Electronic Products : But it’s amazing that the LEDs can produce that mount of light. How many LEDs are going to be in the head lamp?

Mike Wills : I guess probably anywhere from 10 to 20-chip dies. It is how they’re packaged that is critical. It gets down to the point source of the heat and getting that away from the die itself.

Adrian Hill : From our applications with the LED driver range that we have, we’ve typically seen in headlight application, with the one or three watt LEDs, which are typically on the market now, it’s anywhere form between 12 and 18 per function. Per function being a low-beam or a high-beam-type function.

Adrian Hill : The rear clusters don’t require such high power LED light output, but, importantly, they will have the same temperature and packaging issues, but aesthetics tend to drives these more, and so they tend to use smaller cone LEDs, and more of them.

Mike Wills : Absolutely. That’s absolutely right.

Electronic Products : So three watt LEDs is what’s being used now.

Adrian Hill : The biggest issue facing using the LEDs is obviously heat and packaging in optics is a big issue for the lighting people themselves, but from an electronics point of view is that you have to very closely manage the current, because these LEDs are current devices, and therefore when you have a 12- or 14-V system, you have to very carefully mange the current going through to make sure that the light output of the headlights is consistent.

Mike Wills : That’s true. Because with the heat, because it is a current device of the forward voltage on those will move somewhat as the die gets hotter, but you have to maintain the constant current to maintain the light output and the wavelength of the light that’s being output while you’re managing the temperature of that LED, so it’s a pretty delicate balancing match that they’re trying to do there.

Roger Forchhammer : We talked about maintaining the current control because of the heat. Another important issue there is too is how the LEDs are clustered. You also have to have a very good diagnostic to detect an open load and short circuit and mange that.

Adrian Hill : Jim I just wanted to comment on the electrical steering in the car. You had asked: was it just the motor?

It is just a motor, providing a little bit of torque and some control, but, if you look at steering systems today, it is a safety critical component. There’s a lot functions, there’s a lot of functional safety needs, and signal integrity needs there.

Electronic Products : How many different kinds of sensors are in an automobile? Does anybody know the number for that?

Adrian Hill: In one of the recent Mercedes Benz products we had something like 62 independent ICs, and I think the majority of those are sensors, somewhere probably around 50 to 55 ICs.

Terry Pence : The areas that semiconductors in general are aiding the safety, reliability, its fuel efficiency, and one thing we should not forget is weight. I think you brought it up earlier on that vehicles have gotten heavier.

The same cars today is significantly heavier, even though construction techniques have added lighter weight materials in the frame. Everything has grown and so electronics can help get rid of a lot of mechanical linkages, which reduce weight and they also, in many cases, can improve reliability of the system. ■