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A bit on the software-defined vehicle (SDVs)

In-vehicle systems have massively grown in complexity with more installed speakers, microphones, cameras, displays, and compute burden to process the necessary information and provide the proper, often time-sensitive output. The unfortunate side effect of this complexity is the massive increase in ECUs and subsequent cabling to and from its allocated subsystem (e.g., engine, powertrain, braking, etc.). The lack of practicality with this approach has become apparent where more OEMs are shifting away from these domain-based architectures and subsequently traditional automotive buses such as local interconnect network (LIN), controlled area network (CAN) for ECU communications, FlexRay for x-by-wire systems, and media oriented transport (MOST) for audio and video systems. SDVs rethink underlying vehicle architecture so that cars are broken into zones that will directly service the vehicle subsystems that surround it locally, cutting down wiring, latency, and weight. Another major benefit of this are over-the-air (OTA) updates using Wi-Fi or cellular to update cloud-connected cars, however bringing ethernet to the automotive edge comes with its complexities.

ADI’s approach to zonal architectures

This year at CES, EDN spoke with Yasmine King, VP of automotive cabin experience at Analog Devices (ADI). The company is closely working with the underlying connectivity solutions that allow vehicle manufacturers to shift from domain architectures to zonal with ethernet-to-edge (E2B) bus, automotive audio bus (A2B), and gigabit multimedia serial link (GMSL) technology. “Our focus this year is to show how we are adding intelligence at the edge and bringing the capabilities from bridging the analog of the real world into the digital world. That’s the vision of where automotive wants to get to, they want to be able to create experiences for their customers, whether it’s the driving experience, whether it’s the back seat passenger experience. How do you help create these immersive and safe experiences that are personalized to each occupant in the vehicle? In order to do that, there has to be a fundamental change of what the architecture of the car looks like,” said King. “So in order to do this in a way that is sustainable, for mobility to remain green, remain long battery range, good fuel efficiency, you have to find a way of transporting that data efficiently, and the E2B bus is one of those connectivity solutions where it’s it allows for body control, ambient lighting.”

E2B: Remote control protocol solution 10BASE-T1S solution

Based on the OPEN alliance 10BASE-T1S physical layer (PHY), the E2B bus aims at removing the need for MCUs centralizing the software to the high performance compute (HPC) or central compute (Figure 1). “The E2B bus is the only remote control protocol solution available on the market today for the 10BASE-T1S so it’s a very strong position for us. We just released our first product in June of this past year, and we see this as a very fundamental way to help the industry transform to zonal architecture. We’re working with the OPEN alliance to be part of that remote control definition.” These transceivers will integrate low complexity ethernet (LCE) hardware for remote operation and, naturally, can be used on the same bus as any other 10BASE-T1S-compliant product

BMW has already adopted the E2B bus for their ambient lighting system, King mentioned that there has already been further adoption by other OEMs but they were not public yet. “The E2B bus is one of those connectivity solutions where it allows for body control, ambient lighting. Honestly, there’s about 50 or 60 different applications inside the vehicle.” She mentioned how E2B is often used for ambient lighting today but there are many other potential applications such as driver monitoring systems (DMSs) that might detect a sleeping driver via the in-vehicle biometric capabilities to then respond with a series of measures to wake them up, E2B allows OEMs to apply these measures with an OTA update. Without E2B, you’d have to not only update the DMS, but you’d have to update the multiple nodes that are controlling the ambient light. The owner might have to take it back into the shop to apply the updates, it just takes longer and is more of a hassle. With E2B, it’s a single OTA update that is an easy, quick download to add safety features so it’s more realistic to get that safer, more immersive driver experience.” The goal for ADI is to move all the software from all edge nodes to the central location for updates.

Figure 1: EDN editor, Aalyia Shaukat (left) and VP of automotive cabin experience, Yasmine King (right) in front of a suspension control demo with 4 edge nodes sensing the location of the weighted ball, sends the information back to the HPC to send commands back to control the motors. 

A2B: Audio system based on 100BASE-T1

Based upon the 100BASE-T1 standard, the A2B audio follows a similar concept of connecting edge nodes with a specialization in sound limiting the installation of weighty shielded analog cables going to and from the many speakers and microphones in vehicles today for modern functions such as active noise cancellation (ANC) and road noise cancellation (RNC). “We have  RNC algorithms that are connected through A2B, and it’s a very low latency, highly deterministic bus. It allows you to get the inputs from, say, the wheel base, where you’re listening for the noise, to the brain of the central compute very quickly.” King mentioned how audio systems require extremely low latencies for an enhanced user experience, “your ears are very susceptible to any small latency or distortion.” The technology has more maturity than the newer E2B bus and has therefore seen more adoption, “A2B is a technology that is utilized across most OEMs, the top 25 OEMs are all using it and we’ve shipped millions of ICs.” ADI is working on a second iteration of the A2B bus that multiplies the data rate of the previous generation, this is likely due to the maturation of the 1000BASE-T1 standard for automotive applications that is meant to reach 1 Gbps. When asked about the data rate King responded, “I’m not sure exactly what we are publicly stating yet but it will be a multiplier.” 

GMSL: Single-wire SerDes display solution

GMSL is the in-vehicle serializer/deserializer (SerDes) video solution that shaves off the significant wiring typically required with camera and subsequent sensor infrastructure (Figure 2). “As you’re moving towards autonomous driving and you want to replace a human with intelligence inside the vehicle, you need additional sensing capabilities along with radar, LiDAR, and cameras to be that perception sensing network. It’s all very high bandwidth and it needs a solution that can be transmitted in a low-cost, lightweight cable.” Following a similar theme as the E2B and A2B audio buses, using a single cable to manage a cluster display or an in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) human-to-machine interface (HMI) minimizes the potential weight issues that could damage range/fuel efficiency. King finished by mentioning one overlooked benefit of lowering the weight of vehicle harnessing “The other piece that often gets missed is it’s very heavy during manufacturing, when you move over 100 pounds within the manufacturing facilities you need different safety protocols. This adds expense and safety concerns for the individuals who have to pick up the harness where now you have to get a machine over to pick up the harness because it’s too heavy.”

Figure 2: GMSL demo aggregating feeds from six cameras into a deserializer board going into a single MIPI port on the Jetson HPC-platform.

Aalyia Shaukat, associate editor at EDN, has worked in the design publishing industry for six years. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, and has published works in major EE journals as well as trade publications.

Related Content

• CES 2025: Moving toward software-defined vehicles
• CES 2025’s sensor design highlights

The post ADI’s efforts for a wirelessly upgraded software-defined vehicle appeared first on EDN.

If you’re not careful with this thing, it’ll probably lop off your fingers: https://imgur.com/a/XuLKBF1 submitted by /u/Asuntofantunatu [link] [comments]

Digital potentiometers (“Dpots”) are a diverse and useful category of digital/analog components with up to a 10-bit resolution, element resistance from 1k to 1M, and voltage capability up to and beyond ±15v. However, most are limited to 8 bits, monopolar (typically 0v to +5v) signal levels, and 5k to 100k resistances with loose tolerances of ±20 to 30%.

Wow the engineering world with your unique design: Design Ideas Submission Guide

This design idea describes a simple and inexpensive Dpot-like alternative. It has limitations of its own (mainly being restricted to relatively low signal frequencies) but offers useful and occasionally superior performance in areas where actual Dpots tend to fall short. These include parameters like bipolar signal range, terrific differential nonlinearity, tight resistance accuracy, and programmable resolution. See Figure 1.

Figure 1 PWM drives opposing-phase CMOS switches and RC network to simulate a Dpot

RC ripple filtering limits frequency response to typically tens to hundreds of Hz.

Switch U1b connects wiper node W to node B when PWM = 1, and to A when PWM = 0. Letting the PWM duty factor, P = 0 to 1, and assuming no excessive loading of W:

Vw = P(Vb – Va) + Va

 Meanwhile, switch U1a connects W to node A when PWM = 1, and to B when PWM = 0, thus 180o out of phase with U1b. Due to AC coupling, this has no effect on pot DC output, but the phase inversion relative to U1b delivers active ripple attenuation as described in “Cancel PWM DAC ripple with analog subtraction.”

The minimum RC time-constant required to attenuate ripple to no more than 1 least significant bit (lsb) for any given N = number of PWM bits of resolution and Tpwm = PWM period is given by:

RC = Tpwm 2(N/2 – 2)  

For example:

for N = 8, Fpwm = 10 kHz

RC = 10 kHz-1*2(8/2 – 2)  = 100 µs*22 = 400 µs

The maximum acceptable value for R is dictated by the required Vw voltage accuracy under load. Minimum R is determined by:

1. Required resistance accuracy after factoring in the variability of U1b switch Ron: r which is 40 ±40Ω for the HC4053 powered as in Figure 1.
2. Required integral nonlinearity (INL) as affected by switch-to-switch Ron variation, which is just 5 Ω for the HC4053 as powered here.

 R = 1k to 10k would be a workable range of choices for N = 8-bit resolution. N is programmable.

The net result is the equivalent circuit shown in Figure 2. Note that, unlike a mechanical pot or Dpot, where output resistance varies dramatically with wiper setting, the PWMpot’s output resistance (R +r) is nominally constant and independent of setting.

Figure 2 The PWMpot’s equivalent circuit where r = switch Ron, P = PWM duty factor, and where the ripple filter capacitors are not shown.

 Funny footnote: While pondering a name for this idea, I initially thought “PWMpot” was too long and considered making it shorter and catchy-er by dropping the “WM.” But then, after reading the resulting acronym out loud, I decided it was maybe a little too catchy.

And put the “WM” back!

Stephen Woodward’s relationship with EDN’s DI column goes back quite a long way. Over 100 submissions have been accepted since his first contribution back in 1974.

 Related Content

• Cancel PWM DAC ripple with analog subtraction
• A faster PWM-based DAC
• Parsing PWM (DAC) performance: Part 1—Mitigating errors
• PWM power DAC incorporates an LM317
• Cancel PWM DAC ripple with analog subtraction but no inverter
• Cancel PWM DAC ripple with analog subtraction—revisited

The post PWMpot approximates a Dpot appeared first on EDN.

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2025) in Las Vegas (7–11 January), Aledia S.A of Echirolles, near Grenoble, France (a developer and manufacturer of 3D micro-LEDs for display applications based on its large-area gallium nitride nanowires-on-silicon platform) has announced the availability of its micro-LED technology for augmented reality applications and next-generation displays for vision applications...

A network switch is a hardware device that connects devices within a Local Area Network (LAN) to enable communication. It operates at the data link layer (Layer 2) or network layer (Layer 3) of the OSI model and uses MAC or IP addresses to forward data packets to the appropriate device. Unlike hubs, switches efficiently direct traffic to specific devices rather than broadcasting to all network devices.

Types of Network Switch

1. Unmanaged Switch:
   • Basic plug-and-play device with no configuration options.
   • Suitable for small or home networks.
2. Managed Switch:
   • Allows advanced configuration, monitoring, and control.
   • Used in enterprise networks for better security and performance management.
3. Smart Switch:
   • A middle ground between unmanaged and managed switches.
   • Provides limited management features for smaller networks.
4. PoE Switch (Power over Ethernet):
   • Delivers power to connected devices such as VoIP phones and IP cameras.
5. Layer 3 Switch:
   • Integrates routing functions with Layer 2 switching capabilities.
   • Ideal for larger, more complex networks.

How Does a Network Switch Work?

A network switch operates by analyzing incoming data packets, determining their destination addresses, and forwarding them to the correct port. It maintains a MAC address table that maps devices to specific ports, ensuring efficient communication.

Steps in operation:

1. Receives data packets.
2. Reads the packet’s destination MAC or IP address.
3. Matches the address with its internal table to find the correct port.
4. Forwards the packet only to the intended recipient device.

Network Switch Uses & Applications

• Home Networks: Connect devices like PCs, printers, and smart home systems.
• Enterprise Networks: Facilitate communication across servers, workstations, and other IT infrastructure.
• Data Centers: Support high-speed communication and load balancing.
• Industrial Applications: Manage devices in IoT and automation systems.
• Surveillance Systems: Power and connect IP cameras via PoE switches.

How to Use a Network Switch

1. Select the Right Switch: Choose based on your network size and requirements (e.g., unmanaged for simple networks, managed for complex ones).
2. C Connect Devices: Insert Ethernet cables from your devices into the available ports on the switch.
3. Connect to a Router: Link the switch to a router for internet access.
4. Power On the Switch: If using PoE, ensure the switch supports the connected devices.
5. Configure (if applicable): For managed switches, use the web interface or CLI to set up VLANs, QoS, or security settings.

Network Switch Advantages

• Improved Network Efficiency: Directs traffic only to the intended recipient device.
• Scalability: Allows multiple devices to connect and communicate.
• Enhanced Performance: Supports higher data transfer rates and reduces network congestion.
• Security Features: Managed switches offer advanced security controls.
• Flexibility: PoE switches provide power to connected devices, removing the requirement for individual power sources.

 

The post Network Switch Meaning, Types, Working, Benefits & Applications appeared first on ELE Times.

An eSIM (embedded SIM) is an integrated SIM solution embedded within a device, removing the necessity for a physical SIM card. Integrated into a device’s hardware, it enables users to activate a mobile network plan without the need for a physical SIM card. This technology simplifies connectivity and is gaining popularity in smartphones, wearables, IoT devices, and automotive applications.

How Does eSIM Work?
An eSIM functions through a reprogrammable SIM chip that is built into the device’s hardware. In contrast to traditional SIM cards that require physical replacement, eSIMs can be activated or reconfigured using software. Mobile network operators (MNOs) provide QR codes or activation profiles that users scan or download to enable network connectivity.

The process typically involves the following steps:
1. Provisioning: The user receives a QR code or activation data from the MNO.
2. Activation: The eSIM-capable device connects to the MNO’s server to download and install the profile.
3. Switching Networks: Users can store multiple profiles and switch between them as needed.

eSIM Architecture
The architecture of an eSIM integrates hardware and software components to ensure seamless connectivity:
1. eUICC (Embedded Universal Integrated Circuit Card): This is the hardware component that houses the eSIM profile.
2. Profile Management: eSIM profiles are managed remotely by MNOs using Over-the-Air (OTA) technology.
3. Security Framework: Ensures secure provisioning, activation, and data transmission.
4. Interoperability Standards: Governed by GSMA specifications to ensure compatibility across devices and networks.

Types of eSIM
1. Consumer eSIM: Designed for smartphones, tablets, and wearables to provide seamless personal connectivity.
2. M2M (Machine-to-Machine) eSIM: Designed for IoT devices to enable seamless global connectivity.
3. Automotive eSIM: Implemented in connected cars for telematics, navigation, and emergency services.

eSIM Uses & Applications

1. Smartphones and Wearables:
– Enables dual SIM functionality.
– SMakes it easy to switch between carriers without needing to replace SIM cards.

2. IoT Devices:
– Powers smart meters, trackers, and sensors with global connectivity.

3. Automotive:
– Supports connected car applications like real-time navigation, diagnostics, and emergency calls.

4. Travel:
– Allows travelers to activate local plans without buying physical SIMs.

5. Enterprise:
– Facilitates centralized management of employee devices.

How to Use eSIM

1. Verify Device Compatibility: Confirm that the device is equipped with eSIM support.
2. Obtain an eSIM Plan: Contact an MNO to get an eSIM-enabled plan.
3. Activate the eSIM:
– Use the QR code supplied by the network operator for activation.
– Adhere to the displayed prompts to download and set up the eSIM profile.
4. Manage Profiles: Use the device settings to switch between profiles or add new ones.

Advantages of eSIM

1. Convenience: Removes the dependency on physical SIM cards for connectivity.
2. Flexibility: Supports multiple profiles, enabling seamless switching between carriers.
3. Compact Design: Saves space in devices, allowing for sleeker designs or additional features.
4. Remote Provisioning: Simplifies activation and profile management.
5. Eco-Friendly: Reduces plastic waste from physical SIM cards.

Disadvantages of eSIM
1. Limited Compatibility: eSIM technology is not universally supported across all devices.
2. Dependency on MNOs: Activation relies on operator support.
3. Security Concerns: Potential vulnerability during OTA provisioning.
4. Complexity in Migration: Switching devices requires transferring eSIM profiles, which can be less straightforward than swapping physical SIMs.

What is an eSIM Card?
An eSIM card is a built-in chip integrated into the device’s hardware, functioning as a replacement for conventional SIM cards. It operates electronically, allowing devices to connect to networks without physical card insertion.eSIM Module for IoT
In IoT, eSIM modules are integral for providing reliable, scalable, and global connectivity. They:
– Enable remote management of IoT devices.
– Streamline logistics by removing the necessity for region-specific SIM cards.
– Provide a robust solution for devices operating in diverse environments.

Conclusion

eSIM technology represents a significant step forward in connectivity, offering unmatched flexibility and convenience. From smartphones to IoT devices, its applications are broad and transformative. While it has limitations, advancements in compatibility and security are likely to drive its widespread adoption in the coming years.

The post eSIM Meaning, Types, Working, Card, Architecture & Uses appeared first on ELE Times.