An increasing number of car manufacturers are looking to introduce animated lighting into the cabin, as a way of conveying important driver-assistance prompts and vehicle-status information. Current design thinking envisions using an RGB-LED lightbar to communicate to the driver, through color coding, color changing, and blinking sequences. Key engineering challenges include maintaining consistent color across all the LEDs in the lightbar, and ensuring they all change together, at the same time. The MLX81116 addresses this through its unique high-speed communication interface IP, MeLiBu™. The MeLiBu™ controls all individual LEDs separately in the lightbar to produce the lighting effects commanded by the vehicle. The intelligent RGB-LED controller also provides real-time compensation of any LED color drift caused by environmental changes.
The MeLiBu™ communication interface leverages the proven CAN-FD physical layer, which ensures robustness, reliability and high speed (up to 2 Mbit); features that are key requirements for today’s car manufacturers. Support for dedicated optical parameters allows color-mixing accuracy with a delta UV of 1% to ensure no distinguishable differences between individual LEDs in the lightbar. In addition, intelligent high resolution for temperature-related color drift helps maintain a consistent and non-distracting user experience under all operating conditions.
The MLX81116 driver IC has an extremely wide dimming range that allows optimal brightness adjustment for daytime and night driving. Meeting automotive ISO 26262 functional safety requirements up to safety integrity level B (ASIL B), the MLX81116 also features low EMI emission and high immunity, thanks to the use of the CAN-FD physical layer, which eases compliance with applicable EMC regulations.
“Car makers need a robust solution capable of supporting advanced light functionalities,” said Michael Bender, Product Line Manager Embedded Lighting at Melexis. “MLX81116, the first in our product family to leverage MeLiBu™, is a reliable and cost-effective way to address this. We are excited to see leading manufacturers already include it in their new models to deliver a safer driving experience.”
For more information, please visit www.melexis.com.
Combining a passion for technology with truly inspired engineering, Melexis designs, develops and delivers innovative micro-electronic solutions that enable designers to turn ideas into applications that support the best imaginable future. The company’s advanced mixed-signal semiconductor sensor and actuator components address the challenges of integrating sensing, driving and communication into next-generation products and systems that improve safety, raise efficiency, support sustainability and enhance comfort.
A world leader in automotive semiconductor sensors, Melexis has used its core experience in creating chips for vehicle electronics to expand its portfolio of sensors, driver ICs and wireless devices to also meet the needs of smart appliances, home automation, industrial and medical applications. Melexis sensing solutions include magnetic sensors, MEMS sensors (pressure, TPMS, infrared), sensor interface ICs, optoelectronic single point and linear array sensors and Time of Flight. The company’s driver IC portfolio incorporates advanced DC & BLDC motor controllers, LED drivers and FET pre-driver ICs, while Melexis has the know-how and expertise to build bridges between components, allowing them to communicate in a clear and fast way, whether wired (e.g. LIN, SENT) or wireless (RKE, RFID).
Melexis is headquartered in Belgium and employs over 1,500 people in 20 locations worldwide. The company is publicly traded on Euronext Brussels (MELE).
For more information, visit www.melexis.com
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http://www.melexis.com
Publitek
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E-Mail: annie.leisma@publitek.com
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E-Mail: eve@melexis.com
