Intersil Corporation, a leading provider of innovative power management and precision analog solutions, announced the ISL78365 laser diode driver for automotive heads-up display (HUD) systems. The highly integrated device pulses four high intensity lasers up to 750mA for projecting full-HD color video onto the windshield at nearly twice the current of competitive solutions. The ISL78365’s higher current and faster switching speed enables HUDs with high resolution, high color-depth and high frame-rate projections.
Laser HUDs are the latest innovation in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). A vehicle’s HUD keeps drivers focused on the road, safely providing speed, warning signals and other vital vehicle and navigation information on the windshield directly in the driver’s line of sight. The new generation of augmented reality laser HUDs offer near-zero latency and a wide field of view. They overlay additional real-time information such as traffic signs and a planned turning lane, virtually painting arrows and lines on the road ahead to make navigation directions obvious and easy to follow.
The quad-channel ISL78365 is a complete solution for driving lasers in the scanned-MEMS laser projection systems being deployed in next generation autos. It is the industry’s only laser driver with a fourth channel for supporting a wide variety of laser diode configurations, allowing system designers to achieve the desired brightness and sharp, rich colors with high contrast. The ISL78365 provides sub-1.5ns rise and fall times for faster switching speed than competitive devices, resulting in high frame rate, HD color video. The device also offers 10-bit color and 10-bit scale resolution to support a wide variety of contrast levels for each driver channel. And its flexible synchronous parallel video interface supports pixel rates up to 150MHz or 1900 pixels per line.
The ISL78365’s dynamic power management optimizes the laser-diode power supply and offers three power saving modes for improved efficiency and reduced power dissipation to meet system thermal requirements. The programmable multi-pulse return to zero (RTZ) feature reduces speckling, and the device’s wettable flank QFN package simplifies integration into compact laser projection HUDs.
“The ISL78365 offers carmakers the high drive capability, switching speed and color video accuracy that’s enabling advanced laser heads-up displays for today’s luxury vehicles and tomorrow’s mid-range car models,” said Philip Chesley, senior vice president of Precision Products at Intersil. “Our feature-rich laser diode driver minimizes system size and complexity while delivering significantly higher performance than the competition.”
Key Features and Specifications
- Up to 750mA of peak current output per channel
- Fast output switching speeds with pulse rise/fall times of 1.5ns typical for crisp pixels
- Supports up to 150MHz maximum output pixel clock
- Laser voltage sampler with integrated dynamic power optimization controller to conserve system power
- Flexible data order supports multiple RGB laser diode opto-mechanical placement
- Blanking time power reduction reduces laser diode driver current consumption
- Programmable multi-pulse RTZ for maximum flexibility and speckle reduction
- Single 3.3V supply and 1.8V video interface for low power operation
- 3-wire serial peripheral interface
- AEC-Q100 Grade-1 qualified for operation from -40°C to +125°C
- Wettable flank QFN package allows optical inspection of solder joints for lower manufacturing cost
The ISL78365 can be combined with the ISL78206 (http://www.intersil.com/en/products/end-market-specific/automotive-ics/integrated-fet-regulators/ISL78206.html) 2.5A synchronous buck regulator, ISL78201 (http://www.intersil.com/en/products/end-market-specific/automotive-ics/integrated-fet-regulators/ISL78201.html) 2.5A synchronous buck/boost regulator, ISL78233 (http://www.intersil.com/en/products/end-market-specific/automotive-ics/integrated-fet-regulators/ISL78233.html) 3A synchronous buck regulator, ISL78302 (http://www.intersil.com/en/products/end-market-specific/automotive-ics/linear-regulators/ISL78302.html) dual 302mA LDO and ISL29125 (http://www.intersil.com/en/products/optoelectronics/ambient-light-sensors/light-to-digital-sensors/ISL29125.html) digital RGB color light sensor to provide a complete power supply system for automotive laser projection HUDs.
Intersil
www.intersil.com