Automotive ADAS And Automated Driving

Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) provide feedback to a human driver and/or assist the driver in performing steering, braking, or acceleration functions in order to increase safety of those in and around the vehicle. ADAS systems span a wide range of functionality in varying degrees of complexity, and are paving the way to fully autonomous vehicles. The Society of Automotive Engineers defines 6 levels of automated driving, ranging from no automation (Level 0) to fully autonomous (Level 5).

Driver Assistance and Automated Driving Solutions

Each level of automation provides the vehicle with a higher degree of autonomy to perform driving functions, requiring higher degrees of processing power and data path connectivity to navigate the vehicle using data being collected by sensors in and around the vehicle. As vehicle control shifts from human to the automobile, safety becomes even more important and is one of the most critical elements in ADAS system designs.

ADAS systems span a wide range of applications and complexity in design. Timing requirements will also vary widely, and become increasingly important with each successive level of automation as described above. The jump from Level2 to Level3 requires a significant increase in design complexity and therefore presents new challenges for clock tree design. Adoption of high bandwidth FPGAs and/or processors, high-speed data buses, and 1GbE/10GbE Ethernet connectivity present the need for both differential as well as single-ended clocks, at a mix of varying frequencies, some of which have jitter performance requirements below 500fs RMS to meet the needs of high-speed SerDes and PCIe-Express interfaces.