MAX967xx: ADAS, GMSL and SERDES

As the idea of self-driving cars continues to gain more traction, driver and passenger safety become an increasing concern. Many of the features in ADAS technology (Advanced Driver Assistance System) are enabled with the increased usage of cameras placed throughout the vehicle.

In ADAS applications involving cameras, the critical design challenge is to get image data from the camera to the processing unit and from the processing unit to each display as quickly and efficiently as possible. Some of the key tradeoffs in designing ADAS camera systems are image quality, bandwidth, latency, reliability, cost, and power consumption.

The latest SERDES products (Serializer – Deserializer) from Maxim Integrated provide increased reliability and flexibility for uncompressed camera feed transmission systems. SERDES chipsets work by taking the uncompressed parallel video output from an image sensor, combining it with control inputs and serializing it into a single high-speed output, transmitting the data across a cable, and then converting the received signal into the original parallel video output on the deserializer side. Many systems are built to provide both power and high-speed bidirectional data through the same cable. The MAX967xx family offers new safety and reliability features specifically for ADAS applications (more info).