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OEMs are shifting from installing black box solutions that specialized functions in the more conventional domain architecture to a zone architecture and a function-agnostic processing backbone where each node handles location-specific data. Along with this trend, there is a push towards optimizing sensor functions, fusing multimodal input data with ML for contextual awareness. Sensors no longer serve one function, instead they can be leveraged in a series of automotive systems from driver monitoring systems (DMSs) to smart door access. As a result, camera/sensor count is minimized and power consumption maximized. A tour of several booths at CES 2025 showed some of the automotive-oriented solutions.

Automotive lighting

Microchip’s intelligent smart embedded LED (ISELED), ISELED light and sensor network (ILaS), and Macroblock lighting solutions can be seen in Figure 1. The ISELED protocol was developed to overcome the issue of requiring an external IC per LED to control the color/brightness of individual LEDs. Instead, Microchip has integrated an intelligent ASIC into each LED where the entire system can be controlled with a simple 16-bit MCU. The solution allows for more styling control for aesthetics with additional use cases such as broadcasting the status of a car via text that appears on display-based matrix lighting.

Figure 1: Microchip ISELED lighting solution where all of these LEDS are individually addressable allowing designers to change color/brightness levels of each LED. 

ADI’s 10BASE-T1S ethernet to edge bus (E2B) tech has been used as a body control and automotive lighting connectivity solution. And, while this solution is not directly related to LED control, it can be used to update OEM automotive lighting systems that leverage the 10BASE-T1S automotive bus. 

In-cabin sensing systems

One of the more pervasive themes were child presence detection (CPD) and occupancy monitoring system (OMS) products, with many companies showing off their ultra-wide band (UWB) detection and/or ranging tech and 60-GHz radar chips. The inspiration here comes from the incessant pressure on OEMs to meet stringent safety regulations. For instance, The Euro NCAP advanced program will only offer rewards to OEMs for direct sensing systems for CPD. For UWB sensing, the typical setup involved 4 UWB anchors placed outside of the vehicles and two on the inside to detect a phone equipped with UWB. The NXP booth’s automotive UWB demo can be seen in Figure 2. As shown in the image, the UWB radar will be able to identify the distance of the phone from the UWB anchor and unlock the car from the outside using the UWB ranging feature with time of flight (ToF) measurements. The very same principles can be applied for smart door locks and train stations, allowing passengers with pre-purchased train tickets to pass the turnstile from outside of the station to the inside of it.  

Figure 2: The NXP automotive UWB radar smart car access solution.

Qorvo also showed their UWB solution, Figure 3 shows one UWB anchor on a toy car for demonstration purposes. The image also highlights another ADAS application of radar (UWB or 60 GHz): respiration and heartbeat detection. 

An engineer at NXP granted a basic explanation of the process: the technology measures signal reflections from occupants to detect, for instance, how often the chest is expanding/contracting to measure breathing. This allows for direct-sensing of occupants with algorithms that can discern whether or not a child is present in the vehicle, offering a CPD, OMS, intrusion & proximity alert, and a host of other functions with the established sensor infrastructure. It is apparent that there is no clear answer on the number of wireless chips but there is more of a clear requirement that sensors are becoming more intelligent to minimize part-count—a single radar chip could eliminate five in-seat weight sensors. 

Figure 4: Qorvo’s UWB keyless entry and vitals monitoring solutions in partnership with other companies.

TI’s CPD, OMS, and driver monitoring system (DMS) can be seen in Figure 5 with a combination of their 60-GHz radar chip and a camera. Naturally, the shorter wavelength 60-GHz radar offers much more range resolution so this system would likely be more accurate in CPD applications potentially offering less false positives. However, possibly the most obvious benefit of utilizing 60 GHz radar is the fact that a single module replaces the 6 UWB modules for CPD, OMS, intrusion detection, gesture detection, etc. This however, does not entirely sidestep UWB technology; the ranging aspect of UWB allows for accurate smart door access and this is something that may be impractical for 60-GHz technology, especially considering the atmospheric absorption at that particular frequency. 

Figure 5: TI’s CPD, OMS, and driver monitoring system (DMS) CES demo.

AD and surround view systems

Automotive surround view cameras for AD and ADAS functions were also presented in a number of booths. Microchip’s can be seen in Figure 6 where their serializers are used in three cameras that can transmit up to 8 Gbps. The Microchip deserializers are configured to receive the video data and aggregate it via the Automotive SerDes Alliance Motion Link (ASA-ML) standard to the central compute, or high-performance computer (HPC), mimicking a zonal architecture.

Figure 6: Microchip’s ASA-ML standard 360o surround view solution.

ADI also used a serializer/deserializer (SerDes) solution with a gigabit multimedia serial link (GMSL) demo. GMSL’s claim to fame is its lightweight nature, the single-strand solution transports up to 12 Gbps over a single bidirectional cable, shaving weight.

Figure 7:  ADI GMSL demo aggregating feeds from six cameras into a deserializer board and going into a single MIPI port on the Jetson HPC-platform.

Using VLMs for AD

Ambarella, a company that specializes in AI vision processors showed a particularly interesting AD demo that integrated LLM in the stack. This technology was originally developed by Vislab, an Italian startup that is now an R&D automotive center under Ambarella. The system consisted of 6 cameras, 5 radars, and Ambarella’s CV3 automotive domain controller for  L2+ to L4 autonomy. The use of the vision language model (VLM) LLaVA-OneVision allowed for more context-aware decision making. 

Founder of Vislab, Alberto Broggi hosted the demo and explained the benefits of leveraging an LLM in this particular use case, “Suppose you have the best perception in the world, so you can perceive everything; you can understand the position of cars, locate pedestrians, and so on. You will still have problems, because there are situations that are ambiguous.” He continued by describing a few of these situations, “If you have a car in front of you in your lane, you don’t really know whether or not you can overtake because it depends on the situation. If its a broken down vehicle, you can obviously overtake it. If it’s a vehicle that is waiting for a red light, you can’t. So you really need some higher level description and context.”

Figure 8 and the video below shows one such example of contextual-awareness that a VLM can offer.

Figure 8: Ambarella VLM AD demo with use case offering some contextual-awareness and suggestions.  

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.

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The post Automotive insights from CES 2025 appeared first on EDN.

Editors from EDN and our AspenCore sister publications are covering the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Scroll down to see coverage of this year’s CES! 

	CES 2025: Day 2 Wrap and Interview with EdgeCortix’s CEO A constant theme at CES 2025 this week has been around the deployment of AI in all kinds of applications, how to drive as much intelligence as possible to the edge, sensor fusion and making everything smart. We saw many large and small companies developing technologies and products to optimize this process, aiming to get more “smarts” or performance with less effort and power.
	CES 2025: Approaches towards hardware acceleration It is clear that support for some kind of hardware acceleration has become paramount for success in breaking into the intelligent embedded edge. Company approaches to the problem run the full gamut from hardware accelerated MCUs with abundant software support and reference code, to an embedded NPU.
	CES 2025: It’s All About Digital Coexistence, and AI is Real CES 2025 commenced in Las Vegas, Nev., on Sunday at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center for the trade media with the Consumer Technology Association’s annual tech trends survey and forecast. Plus, there was a sneak preview provided to some of the exhibiting companies at the CES Unveiled event.
	Integration of AI in sensors prominent at CES 2025 Miniaturization and power efficiency have long defined sensor designs. Enter artificial intelligence (AI) and software algorithms to dramatically improve sensing performance and enable a new breed of features and capabilities. This trend has been apparent at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, Nevada.
	Software-defined vehicle (SDV): A technology to watch in 2025 Software-defined vehicle (SDV) technology has been a prominent highlight in the quickly evolving automotive industry. But how much of it is hype, and where is the real and tangible value? CES 2025 in Las Vegas will be an important venue to gauge the actual progress this technology has made with a motto of bringing code on the road.
	CES 2025: Wirelessly upgrading SDVs 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 is 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.
	CES 2025: Moving toward software-defined vehicles TI’s automotive innovations are currently focused in powertrain systems; ADAS; in-vehicle infotainment (IVI); and body electronics and lighting. The recent announcements fall into the ADAS with the AWRL6844 radar sensor as well as IVI with the AM275 and AM62D processors and the class-D audio amplifier.
	CES 2025: Day 1 Recap with Synaptics, Ceva EE Times and AspenCore staff are on-site at CES 2025, providing expert coverage on the latest and greatest developments at one of the largest tech events in the world.
	CES 2025: A Chat with Siemens EDA CEO Mike Ellow Siemens showcased its latest PAVE360 digital twin solution this year at CES 2025, lowering the barrier between design efforts that are typically siloed. EE Times had an opportunity to chat with Siemens EDA CEO Mike Ellow about how this approach to design is relevant for the semiconductor industry—especially considering the recent uptick in using AI tools at every level of a system to dynamically assess the trickle up/down effects of design adjustments.
	CES 2025: An interview with Si Labs’ Daniel Cooley At the forefront of many of the CES wireless solutions is WiFi’s newest iteration (WiFi 6), BLE and BLE audio for their already-established place in consumer devices. A chat with Silicon Labs CTO Daniel Cooley illuminated the company’s presence and future in IoT and the intelligent edge.

 

The post CES 2025 coverage appeared first on EDN.

For its fiscal first-quarter 2025 (to end-November 2024), LED chip and component maker SemiLEDs Corp of Hsinchu, Taiwan has reported revenue of $1.261m, down from $1.324 last quarter and $1.65m a year ago...

Micro-LED technology firm VueReal Inc of Waterloo, ON, Canada has appointed Giuseppe Buscemi as VP of semiconductor engineering. The firm reckons that, due to his extensive experience in semiconductor production facilities and deep knowledge of micro-LED technology, he will be pivotal in scaling its cartridge production capabilities to meet growing demand...

Plessey Semiconductors Ltd of Plymouth, UK — which develops embedded micro-LED technology for augmented-reality and mixed-reality (AR/MR) display applications — and Meta Platforms Inc have developed what is claimed to be the brightest red micro-LED display suitable for AR glasses. Offering up to 6,000,000nits at high resolution (<5μm) with ultra-low power consumption, it is reckoned to overcome critical technical challenges, helping to pave the way for the next computing platform...

Teledyne HiRel Semiconductors of Milpitas, CA, USA (part of the Teledyne Defense Electronics Group that provides solutions, sub-systems and components to the space, transportation, defense and industrial markets) has announced the availability of its model TDSW84230EP gallium nitride (GaN) high-power RF switch. Optimized for aerospace & defense applications, it offers high peak power and is designed to replace positive-intrinsic-negative (PIN) diode-based RF switches commonly used in RF front ends of tactical and military communication radio systems...

Miniaturization and power efficiency have long defined sensor designs. Enter artificial intelligence (AI) and software algorithms to dramatically improve sensing performance and enable a new breed of features and capabilities. This trend has been apparent at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, Nevada.

See full story at EDN’s sister publication, Planet Analog.

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The post Integration of AI in sensors prominent at CES 2025 appeared first on EDN.