NXP’s automotive instrument cluster block diagram

NXP is broadening its portfolio of products to drive and control LCD displays, LEDs in indicator lamps, buttons and illuminate car displays. This instrument cluster, or driver information center, receives all types of important analog or digital information via the in-vehicle network, which must be processed and displayed in a panel and/or via a head-up display.

Display the information you need
NXP offers a broad portfolio of LCD display drivers (PCA85xx) specifically designed for the use with Vertical Alignment (VA) displays, a display technology widely used in instrument clusters. NXP doesn’t limit the instrument cluster designer to a specific display mounting technology, we offer display drivers as cased versions (in a package, e.g. TQFP or LQPF) for PCB mounting or, alternatively, as die with gold bumps for Chip On Glass (COG) application, a technology in which the display driver is directly mounted on the glass of the display.

To drive the numerous LEDs, NXP offers a whole range of products to give you the freedom to choose the proper one. Starting from a simple current source, going through several logic devices up to complex LED controllers (PCA96xx) with integrated PWM channels to complete the portfolio to the high end. These LED controllers integrate several high resolution PWM channels that allow for color mixing and global dimming of tell tales and backlights in instrument clusters.

In-vehicle communication
Besides offering standalone transceivers for all networking protocols for instrument clusters such as LIN, CAN and FlexRay, NXP offers advanced functionality such as failure management and power saving, with highly integrated in-vehicle-networking products such as system basis chip (SBC) families. The SBCs (UJA10xx families) combine one or several bus transceivers, voltage regulators, I/O pins and the option of a watchdog in a single IC. The combination of these integrated functions offers advanced low-power mode control and smart fail-safe behavior. Pin compatible family devices with different transceiver options support scalable platforms by simply changing the population of the printed circuit board.

Clocks/Realtime Clocks
NXP’s stand-alone automotive Realtime Clocks and Car Clocks span a wide range of instrument cluster application needs, from simple ultra low-power time references (supported by NXP’s Realtime Clocks) to fully integrated clocks with display drivers (supported by NXP’s Car Clocks). Latter can be directly run of the 12V battery.

Magnetoresistive and Temperature Sensors
NXP’s offers a wide range of magneto-resistive (MR) sensors for magnetic fields (KMZ family), and sensor systems for angular measurement (KMA family) and speed measurement (KMI family) plus silicon-based temperature sensors. All of them are base for the information displayed to the driver at the instrument cluster.

The MR devices provide output signals virtually independent of magnet tolerances, magnet temperature coefficients, magnet-sensor distance and positioning tolerances, guaranteeing reliability and simplifying your manufacturing process. The KTY temperature sensors, which offer a virtually linear characteristic over their entire operating range, ensure highly accurate measurement with a long operating life. The series can be used in systems for overheating protection, and heating control.

I/O protection
NXP offers a series of ESD protection devices out of the PESD family, specifically designed to protect automotive networks. The MMBZ series offers single line bidirectional or dual-line unidirectional transient overvoltage protection in a small SOT23 package. Surge protection up to 600W is assured by the Transient Voltage Suppressor (TVS) product family.
Low Ohmic Power MOSFET devices in advanced TrenchMOS technology allow robust reverse polarity protection solutions.

Glue logic
Beside a complete portfolio of standard logic products with different supply voltage range and speed in innovative packages, NXP offers dedicated devices as low Ohmic analog switches, analog and digital multiplexers to overcome limitations of the µC or FlipFlops to debounce the various switches and I/O expansion devices to strive for overall cost optimized instrument cluster solutions.

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