Unless you ride in a spacecraft, automotive power seats are probably the most complex chair in which you will ever sit. More adjustable than airplane seats – and much more comfortable than a dentist’s chair – automotive power seats provide a luxurious level of comfort, convenience and safety.
Whether you are moving the seat up and down, forward or…
Co-authored with Jitin George.
Originally published in Electronic Products.
Autonomous robots are intelligent machines that can understand and navigate through its environment without human control or intervention. Although this technology is relatively young, there are many different use cases of autonomous robots in factories, warehouses, cities, and homes. For example, robots can be used to transport goods around warehouses…
Technology companies are looking to expand into more intelligent and advanced sensing in vehicle interiors. Consumers want to see applications such as child presence detection, occupant detection, vital-sign monitoring and gesture recognition. The in-cabin space currently has various camera-based and time-of-flight solutions; however, most of these are limited to only one application…
Not too long ago, widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) was nothing but science fiction. Once thought too expensive or impractical, we are now in the midst of an EV revolution driven by OEMs’ desire to achieve zero emissions and explore alternative energy sources. Many car manufacturers have gone all-in by pledging all-EV lineups in the next 10 to 15 years.
Despite this momentum, we stand at an inflection…
It’s a challenge to create highly efficient and compact designs while also adhering to strict electromagnetic interference (EMI) requirements imposed by groups such as Comité International Spécial des Perturbations Radioélectriques (CISPR). Therefore, component selection becomes a critical part of the design process. As with most design decisions, choosing between…
Gallium nitride (GaN) is a popular topic in the power electronics industry, as it enables designs such as 80 Plus titanium power supplies, 3.8-kW/L electric vehicle (EV) onboard chargers and EV charging stations. In many applications, GaN replaces traditional silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) given its…
The first three installments of this technical article series focused on the benefits of designing with low-power amplifiers and how to maximize their efficiency. Unfortunately, low-power amplifiers also come with their share of trade-offs. In this fourth installment, I will consider one of the most common challenges with low-power amplifier designs – instability…
Whether it excites or bores you, continued learning is a necessary part of life. Semiconductors and electronics invite constant learning; I personally enjoy exposure to new material and ideas. The field of electronics contains an abundance of textbooks, research and experiences, and choosing among them can be difficult and time-consuming. My TI journey began with a resource created to guide this learning process: TI Precision…
From smartphones to cars, consumers are demanding more features packed into increasingly smaller products. To help with this trend, TI has optimized its packaging technology for our semiconductor devices, including the load switches used for subsystem control and power sequencing. Packaging innovation enables greater power density, making it possible…
This post was co-authored by Joe Folkens
Sensing offers an opportunity for companies to increase functionality in existing products. In the Internet of Things space, for example, Omdia predicts that sensor shipments will increase by almost 20 billion units from 2020 to 2024, with radar sensing growing at a compound annual growth rate of approximately…
As automobile gas mileage standards continue to increase (according to the Environmental Protection Agency, up to 40 miles per gallon by 2026), the challenge for automotive audio designers is how to provide an immersive audio experience while simultaneously reducing vehicle weight and improving overall efficiency.
If you design automotive external amplifiers, you can refresh your…
Designing a power-efficient edge artificial intelligence (AI) system while achieving a faster time to market can become tedious in the absence of the right tools and software from an embedded processor vendor. Challenges include selecting the right deep learning model, training and optimizing the model for performance and accuracy goals, and learning proprietary tools for model deployment…
If your first car was anything like mine, it probably lacked sensor modules such as cameras, radar and lidar, which make the safety features of modern advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) like blind-spot detection, park assistance and collision avoidance possible. Because the data collected by these sensor modules directly correlates with passenger safety, it’s important that they work properly over time. Unfortunately…
Everyone agrees that seeing clearly on the road is essential while driving a car. This truth becomes even more critical when implementing technologies such as autonomous driving. The “eyes” of an autonomous vehicle are called light detection and ranging (lidar) technology, which provides precise images of what surrounds the vehicle. Lidar systems use a light source and…
Incorrect output behavior can occur when large negative input voltages in comparators violate the input common-mode voltage range. In cases where it’s not possible to avoid a negative input voltage, it’s important to protect the input pins of the comparator and prevent a phenomenon called phase reversal, also known as phase inversion, from occurring.
In this article…
With advances in medicine and health care, the average life expectancy of humans continues to increase. Virtually every country in the world is experiencing growth in the size and proportion of the elderly in their populations, with the total number of people aged 65 years or older projected to double to 1.5 billion in 2050. Concurrently, in-home care or nursing facilities must…
To reliably capture high-frequency signals and fast transient pulses, wide-bandwidth data acquisition systems like oscilloscopes and active probes require high-performance analog front-end (AFE) signal chains that must be able to:
Andrew Wallace contributed to this article
In a previous article, “What is a smart AFE?,” I discussed smart analog front ends (AFEs) and how they represent the most recent advancement in closed-loop control. Many of the applications discussed in the previous article covered broader applications in the automotive and industrial markets. In this article, I’ll explore one industrial…
The Euro New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) recently updated their standards for radar to improve driver assistance features in new cars.
NCAP standards vary by region; in the U.S., our NCAP is governed by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration a.k.a. NHTSA and the Global NCAP is a centralized organization. However, all organizations have the same goal: to set standards…
Thermopiles are useful noncontact sensors for measuring not only temperature but also detecting select gases. Since thermopiles may have relatively high series impedance, they present numerous challenges to circuit designers trying to obtain absolute precision across a wide temperature range while meeting required minimum resolutions. The low output voltage…
The world is a noisy place – and power supplies are no exception. In the pursuit of higher efficiency, power converters switching at faster and faster speeds create unintended issues, including increasing the system’s susceptibility to transients and noise. It’s important to consider this susceptibility when choosing how to design your power supplies, and what…
If you’re a designer working on a new product that will use an Arm®-based processor, you’re probably already comfortable working with integrated circuits (ICs) that have four to 48 pins. You may occasionally use a device with more pins, even though it takes a considerable amount of time to read the data sheet and make sure that everything is wired up correctly.
But…
Analog
Automotive
