Feature: System safety


If reflecting on the automotive history shows us anything, it’s that continuous development is crucial to ensuring driver and passenger safety. By striving to improve our vehicles through ingenuity and expertise at the chip level, we not only achieve a more comfortable, enjoyable driving


experience, but also a safer one


Improved ICs Essential to the success of TPMS is the electronics within. Tese systems require ICs capable of performing signal conditioning and signal conversion, as well as communicating data to the driver – all achieved at low power usage, with high measurement accuracy and reliability in small packages; see Figure 1 for one example. Reaching these requirements proves difficult with standard, off-the-shelf ICs, but can be achieved with custom ICs. An ASIC, or Application Specific


Integrated Circuit, offers multiple benefits over a standard IC. It can be designed to a customer’s exacting specification, and fully optimised for an application. Tis optimisation reduces the bill of materials, since functionalities


18 June 2024 www.electronicsworld.co.uk


and components that are not needed by the system can be removed. Here at Swindon Silicon Systems,


we also incorporate communication protocols like 2.4GHz BLE within the ASIC, through the system-in-package approach, where several individual dies (ASIC, MEMS and BLE) are encapsulated in a single package, reducing development time and, therefore, time to market. For battery-powered sensors, like


those in the TPMS, the ASIC can also offer lower power consumption through performance optimisation by using advanced power-saving techniques. By integrating protocols that switch


off the sensors when the car is parked, and only switch them back on again when the vehicle is moving, the ASIC


extends the TPMS’s battery, which in some cases can last up to ten years, or at least as long as the tyre. Contrary to what might be


expected, the custom design process for an ASIC doesn’t need to be slow. An experienced ASIC design and supply company will have its own IP and can also access third- party IP, thus shortening the design timescales. If reflecting on the automotive


history shows us anything, it’s that continuous development is crucial to ensuring driver and passenger safety. By striving to improve our vehicles through ingenuity and expertise at the chip level, we not only achieve a more comfortable, enjoyable driving experience, but also a safer one.


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