An Optical Nervous System to Interconnect Sensors and Artificial Brains in AV

The connectivity of sensors with AI central units is key in ADAS and AV. This connectivity must be reliable, low latency, and high data rate.

The presentation will explain how optical interconnections are very well positioned compared with other legacy electrical links, attending to demanded data rates, signal integrity, EMC performance, and future-proven data-rate scalability.

IEEE Std 802.3cz, an automotive optical physical layer specification supporting data rates up to 50 Gb/s, was released in March 2023. The main differences between the optical physical layers for automotive and data centers will be described, attending to requirements, physical layer design, photonics, DSP, link budget, dependability functions, and other distinctive automotive features.

The presentation will explain why traditional implementation of optical transceivers, from circuit design and IC packaging points of view, is no longer valid for automotive and which new approaches are needed, considering the different use cases.