Intersil announced the ISL78365 laser diode driver for automotive HUD systems. This highly integrated device uses four high-intensity laser pulses of up to 750mA to project Full HD color video onto the windshield almost twice as fast as competing solutions. The higher current and faster switching speed of the driver give the HUD high resolution, high color depth and high frame rate projection.
The laser HUD is the latest innovation in advanced driver assistance systems. The vehicle's HUD keeps the driver focused on the road and provides speed, warning signals, and other important vehicle and navigation information safely on the windshield directly in the driver's line of sight. The new generation of augmented reality laser HUDs provides near-zero latency and a wide field of view. They are superimposed with other real-time information such as traffic signs and planned turning lanes, and in fact arrows and lines are drawn on the road ahead to make the navigation direction clear and easy to understand.
The four-channel device is a complete solution for driving lasers in scanning MEMS laser projection systems deployed in next-generation cars. It is the industry's only laser driver with a fourth channel to support a variety of laser diode configurations, enabling system designers to achieve the required brightness and sharp, rich colors with high contrast. Compared with competing products, it provides rise and fall times of less than 1.5ns to achieve faster switching speeds, thereby achieving high frame rate HD color video. The device also offers 10-bit color and 10-bit proportional resolution to support various contrast ratios for each driver channel. Its flexible synchronous parallel video interface supports pixel rates up to 150MHz or 1900 pixels per line.
Idynamic power management optimizes laser diode power and provides three power-saving modes to increase efficiency and reduce power consumption to meet system cooling requirements. Programmable multi-pulse return-to-zero (RTZ) functionality reduces speckle, and the device's wettable side QFN package simplifies integration with a compact laser projection HUD.
Philip Chesley, senior vice president of precision products at Intersil, said: "The ISL78365 provides automakers with high drive capabilities, switching speeds and color video accuracy, providing advanced laser head-up displays for today's luxury cars and future mid-range car models.
