In this two-part guest commentary, Carrie Browen and Kevin Kershner from Keysight Technologies share their insights into the future of high speed in-vehicle display and sensor connections.
A conceptual diagram of a zone-based in vehicle network architecture. Image: Keysight Technologies.
It is no secret the pace of innovation in the automotive industry is exploding.
If the last 20 years have been linear in the development of electrification, the last two to three years have been exponential.
Bandwidth Requirements
To get a better understanding of the bandwidth requirements, remember that the approximate bit rate of a video stream can be calculated as follows.
- Frame Size = Resolution x Color Depth
- Bit Rate = Frame Size x Frame rate
So, for an ADAS camera capturing a 1080p image, with a color depth of 24-bits and transmitting at 30fps, the bit rate to be supported equals:
- Frame Size = 1920 x 1080 x 24 = 49,766,400
- Bit Rate = 49,766,400 x 30 = 1,493 Mbps
It used to be that a car was a means of getting from A to B.
Now, we can safely say that is not true for the vehicles of today and certainly not for the new vehicles of tomorrow.
Just about every new car on the market has a backup camera, park assist, and blind spot monitoring.
Some offer a 360-degree view.
Other features offer real-time traffic updates, cellular connection to potential hazards, other road users, vehicles, or pedestrians.
There are features that can detect if a driver is distracted or tired.
Meanwhile, the people in the car are often unaware of driving conditions, while they enjoy infotainment systems.
These features are delivered through a mixture of sensors, cameras, and networks.
As demands go up, next-generation advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) require camera and radar systems with increasingly high resolution.
