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Hello, and welcome back to our Connect series of videos. Today we're going to be talking about connected vehicles. My name is Nadeem Zaki. I'm the marketing manager on our Sun-1 GHz product line. I have with me today a great panel-- Neil Seshan, marketing and applications manager from our transceivers product line.

I have on my left Evan Wakefield, application manager from our wireless connectivity automotive team, and I have on my right Logan Cummins, applications manager from our FPD-Link team. So Neil, we're here today to talk about connected vehicles. When you hear connected vehicle, what vision comes to mind for you?

Yeah, for me, connected vehicle means a car where all the ECUs are able to receive data, interpret the data in a timely manner, and then transmit that data to make the experience both safe and enjoyable for the passenger. And when I talk about data, I mean data that's coming within the car and also the data that exists around in the surroundings. So that is basically what my vision of a connected vehicle is. And that's probably something that will get us to autonomous driving faster.

Yeah, so going towards autonomous driver and driving and sharing more information throughout the vehicle, Evan, what types of problems are we solving on the wireless side when we think about connected vehicles?

Yeah, that's a great question. As vehicles become more intelligent, there's an increased focus to improve the user experience with those vehicles. And on the wireless side, there's a lot of opportunities to do that. Today, a lot of people use key fobs. Those key fobs are based on UHF and LF-based technologies. And it's pretty known in the industry that those are not the most secure solutions.

So today, there's a lot of focus on how do we make a more secure, reliable, and friendly user experience for vehicles and for consumers of those vehicles. And one of the key focuses is actually enabling something called a phone key or a car access through your phone. You can pair with your car through Bluetooth Low Energy and use either ultra-wideband today or in the future, channel sounding, which is a new feature coming in in a future Bluetooth core spec. But those are two technologies that are really enabling a next generation of connectivity and specifically, a user experience through car access.

So yeah, really cool idea to be able to just get in and out of our cars with our phones with minimum fuss. What kind of trends are you seeing then on the wired side, Logan?

Yeah, at a high level there's a lot more of the ECUs, as mentioned. From my perspective, I see a lot more displays and a lot more cameras throughout the vehicle. So the number of displays in a vehicle is continuing to grow in new cars today, as well as the sizes are getting larger and the amount of resolution needed is getting bigger as well. So the overall bandwidth requirements is growing over time.

So we've got a lot more bandwidth information being sent from one side of the car to the other, bigger cameras, more sensors. Neil, are we using the same architecture to move all that data around? Or is there some sort of rework of the architecture?

There's a lot of changes in the architecture as well. You know, traditionally in cars it was domain controlled architectures. So you had, say, a ECU that was handling all the windows or the seats. But now with the zonal architectures coming in where the car is broken into different zones and communicating to the central computer, our customers now have to look at what is going to be those architectures. what devices are they going to use, what's going to be the wiring that they're going to use, because all this transition from the domain controller architecture to the zone controller came because they wanted to reduce the harness and the weight of all the wires that are running around in the car. So definitely there is new challenges that our customers are going to face when it goes from domain control to the zonal control architectures.

Really interesting, so a full change in the architecture of how data and the wiring is set up inside the connected vehicle. Then coming back to you, Logan, does that mean that designers and customers are bringing new types of problems to solve?

Yeah, from the wired side I think the biggest challenges would be cable weight, cable length, as well as some of the electromechanical issues with getting a cable from point A to point B. So in the wired environment, it's largely EMC considerations, knowing the emission types and the implications, to the overall vehicle from those emissions.

OK, so a little bit different on the wired side. Have you seen any similar changes on the wireless side, Evan?

Yeah, absolutely. We have three care-abouts that we see from customers. It's reliability, similar concepts in terms of being able to do the with the electromechanical connectors especially and actually BMS systems-- there's some investment to look into wireless BMS to help actually alleviate some of those challenges with reliability.

But then when you talk about reliability, we're talking about those complex use cases for car access, for tire pressure monitoring systems. We want to make sure that we're providing both high quality software and high quality hardware to make sure that we're meeting the requirements of building an application that can last 10, 15, 20 years on the road and going through all sorts of different types of harsh conditions.

The other topics that we see a lot, cyber security is a frequently asked question these days. And TI has a process for our software development that meets ISO 20143. In addition, we are focused on low power performance.

Our car access system, it operates when the vehicle is in the key off state. And so you want to make sure that you're not draining the power from the actual battery itself. Nobody wants to walk up to their vehicle and it not be on or just completely be dead, so that's definitely one of the key frequently asked questions that we get from customers.

Got it. So a little bit of focusing on the low power, also trying to address some security concerns. And you mentioned a standard there, which is really important in the automotive world to be meeting different standards. Logan, from the wired side, what kind of standards are governing the way we're developing our new solutions at TI?

Yeah, FPD-Link is a multi-protocol aggregator. So it's going to aggregate a variety of input or output protocols. So in our cases, it's HDMI, DisplayPort, MIPI D-PHY, MIPI C-PHY, and OLDI and even more. And it will basically convert that to FPD-Link and out of FPD-Link into another standard that's needed on the remote side, another zone of the vehicle. So it could do the standard or protocol conversion inherently over the serializer and deserializer device.

Cool, so it almost meets many different standards and helps translate between them.

Exactly.

What about then your wired products, Neil? How do they interact with the standards?

So for our team, we work on CAN, LIN, SBCs. And traditionally, the CAN standard has evolved. You know earlier, it used to be just the standard CAN. Then it became CAN FD. And now we have CAN FD SIC. So TI does have all the devices that meet each of these standards. And we're continuously creating devices that meet and in some cases even beat the standards.

And you know, Logan was talking about emissions or EMC requirements. So we make sure that all our parts meet the EMC standards as well for worldwide OEMs, and each of these parts are approved at the OEM. So the tier 1s can design with any of these devices that we provide for the standards.

In addition to that, we also have isolation devices. And when you look at HEV vehicles, the isolation devices support the communication between the low voltage side and the high voltage side, so integrating the CAN devices with the isolation devices now gives a very small solution that customers can use in their hybrid electric vehicles.

So you're meeting OEM requirements. You're addressing isolation requirements from your product line. You're making things smaller. Are there any specific products that you want to mention that kind of help hit this Venn diagram of requirements?

Yeah, absolutely. I'll talk about one of the innovative products that we have currently. A couple years back, if we look at it for 3.3V CAN, there was no standard. There is no standard today as well. It's all 5 volt CAN. And the reason was there was a barrier to 3.3. One is the interoperability. So in the same system, can a 3 volt CAN and a 5 volt CAN talk to each other? And the second is the EMC. Will the 3 volt CAN meet the EMC requirements of the system?

TI have a part. And we have shared this, you know, at the CAN plugfest in April this year. And we are working actually with the standard bodies to actually get the 3.3 volt standard ratified. So that's one of the areas where TI is at the leading edge of innovation and making sure that we are not just meeting and beating the standards, but we are working with the standard bodies to get new standards out in the market.

You know, that's one of the things that's unique about TI is we have a lot of involvement in a lot of the standards bodies. And we kind of have a similar strategy as well. We are involved heavily in the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, specifically towards defining a number of new features that have been introduced in the Bluetooth core spec both previously to the current generation but also in the future.

I highlighted one of those features being channel sounding. And channel sounding is this new opportunity to be able to enable reliable, highly secure, but also highly accurate distance measurements all through a single Bluetooth radio. So you don't need another device in order to get that ranging or the security out of your system.

You can actually use your Bluetooth radio, as long as it supports that future standard to be able to do a lot of the car access that you'll see today in a much more simplified, low cost, and lower power manner. That's a beautiful thing about CI is that we have that connectivity, no pun intended, into the special interest groups and standards bodies that are working across all of these different industries.

Yeah, and it's great to see how we take the customer and market needs, we take the standards requirements, we use them to make parts, but we also influence them, so that we can really push the boundaries on innovation. Logan, how about from your group? What's the latest and greatest?

Yeah, our FPD-Link portfolio of serializers and deserializers will transmit ultra high resolution video from one point in the vehicle to another, so whether that be cameras to a sensor aggregator or displays to the main computer in the vehicle. So we're able to do that over one wire with an embedded clock and using low cost and low weight cabling.

Cool. OK, so I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you all and learn a little bit more about connected vehicles and how each of your teams understands the market, has some cool innovative products coming out to address their needs. Any closing thoughts from you, Neil?

You know, when we talk about innovation, and we spoke about all these different products, but one thing I would like to highlight is innovation is also in package. TI does have the smallest package CAN devices in the sort package. We were the first in the industry to come with it. And on the other end of the spectrum, we have the ultra wide body 14 millimeter creepage and clearance package for isolation devices that you can use for 800 volt batteries, 1,000 volt batteries, and even beyond. So TI is able to give you this breadth of portfolio from size, from device innovations that can meet, whether you're designing for a domain architecture or for zonal architecture.

And that's really interesting, Neil, that we're not just doing the innovations we talked about earlier, but there's also this package piece a manufacturing company like TI can use to help meet the requirements and connected vehicle. So looking at the wireless side, Evan, are there any closing thoughts?

Yeah, absolutely. In our market-- we're trying to address a couple different markets. One of them is the tire pressure monitoring system market. And the other one is the car access market. They each have different requirements. TPMS tends to require a little bit lower performance, less flash, less RAM, where the car access market requires something that's a little bit more robust, higher speed in terms of clock speed for the processor, more flash, more RAM, some additional peripherals.

So what's really important is that we have a portfolio that has the breadth to meet the demand of each one of those different types of use cases. We have the CC2340R5, R5, which is purpose built for key fob and tire pressure monitoring system type applications. And in addition for our car access side of things, we have processors that are capable of meeting the requirements of a CCC-type standardized use case or ICCE, if you're in China. So we have the ability to address whatever market, whatever need, whatever challenge is presented to us from a TPMS car access type automotive use case for wireless PLE.

Cool, so not just about getting in and out of the car but also about keeping all four tires properly inflated. And then Logan, any closing thoughts from you before we wrap up today?

No, my only closing thought is that I'm excited where the connected car is heading in relation to displays and cameras. Some of the new technology we'll be seeing in the vehicle, either supporting driver assistance, automation, or what we're able to put on displays that kind of competes or is in line with what we've grown to be accustomed to in our phones or on our TVs, some of that technology is finally catching up into the connected car. And FPD-Link is a critical piece in that link.

Yeah, it definitely seems like the next frontier of innovation and adding more technology and connectivity to the world is going to be in the car, so thank you all for joining us today. And thank you to my great panel here for teaching me a little bit about connected vehicles. We'll see you next time on the Connect series.