February 2016
10
C
over
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tory
somewhat astonishing considering that the
carburettor was invented in 1876 and wasn’t
widely phased out until the late 1990s. Jerry
Maldonado, vice president of automation,
customer lifecycle solutions at CA Technol-
ogies, put this in perspective in a company
blog. According to Maldonado, a luxury car
today has about 100 individual microproces-
sors and even a relatively modest one has 25 to
30, including the dreaded event recorder that
verifies how you were operating your vehicle
when it crashed. He also compiled an estimate
of the lines of code they employ, comparing
this with other data-intensive platforms. An
F-22 fighter by his estimates has 12 million
lines of code, the flight software in a Boeing
7878 Dreamliner has 15 million lines, and the
Android operating system has 12 million. A
Chevrolet Volt has 12 million. In short, now-
adays most complex vehicles are formidable
mobile computing platforms whose compu-
tational assets will increase as the number
of parameters gathered by V2V and V2I are
added in coming years.
A considerable portion of this information
will come from disparate sources ranging
from on-board and external cameras, to sen-
sors in the pavement, and other sources that
have not been developed yet. Everything from
traffic lights to railroad crossings and pedes-
trians will be discernable to these systems.
Within this information will be data gathered
by radar sensors whose number will likely
increase, thanks to a radar ability to provide
precision information about the host vehicle
as well as those to its front, side, and back.
Ubiquitous though radar systems may be,
they are not the only RF and microwave sys-
tems that will be essential in and out of the
autonomous vehicle; massive amounts of data
captured by the connected car will arrive by
means of Wi-Fi or cellular systems. The auton-
omous vehicle and all the external systems that
enable it to function not only provide infor-
mation about a vehicle, they allow connection
to other vehicles, roadside infrastructure, and
the Web. The possibilities of what can be done
with such data on a massive scale are enticing
with respect not only to traffic management
and law enforcement, but on a grander scale of
economics as someday vehicular traffic will be
precisely quantifiable enough to forecast con-
sumption, population behaviour, and other
presently intangible attributes of society on a
near real-time basis. As the world reels from a
string of breaches and massive data collection
by intelligence agencies, security is getting
increased attention in automotive circles. It is
becoming increasingly obvious that no matter
how secure companies and government agen-
cies attempt to be, someone will ultimately
find a way in. Once autonomous vehicles are
plying the streets everywhere, more informa-
tion about where we go, what we do, what we
buy, and whether we travel within the scope
of what is deemed to be sensible will be avail-
able for analysis. And it will likely be avail-
able to hackers, as well. Alongside this issue
is whether or not most people will like having
some unseen entity guiding how they drive
and where. All the same, the economic result
of much safer and autonomous vehicles will
save many lives and billions of dollars in pre-
vented accidents. It is also a massive new mar-
ket for some sectors of the RF and microwave
industry. Every vehicle will have multiple
radars, become its own Wi-Fi hotspot per-
haps along with cellular capability, and huge
numbers of radar and optical sensors will be
mounted on so-called street furniture such as
benches and the like; all connected without
wires. This together with the ubiquity of IoT
devices will ensure the health of the RF wire-
less industry as far into the future as anyone is
likely to guess.
n
For further information, visit the Mouser
Application & Technologies section at:
.
Meet us at Embedded World at Stand 4A-101
Hall-Stand 4-173
Renesas: RX230 MCUs support
cost-sensitive industrial and
consumer applications
The new RX230 Group of 32-bit micro-
controllers from Renesas offers an optimal
combination of high performance with dig-
ital signal processing and floating point unit,
and low power consumption. With 1.8V to
5.5V supply, the RX230 Group is ideal for
applications that require high processing
performance in environments with low cur-
rent supply capacity – a key requirement in
several industrial and consumer applications
– as well as the robustness needed in home
appliance applications.
Hall-Stand 2-110
Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe to
become Fujitsu Electronics Europe
Fujitsu Electronics Europe (FEEU) has
entered the market as a new global distributor
on 1 January 2016. Previously doing business
as Fujitsu Semiconductor Europe (FSEU), the
company now operates from offices in Lan-
gen (near Frankfurt), Munich, Milan, Buda-
pest and Istanbul after changing its name and
realigning its strategy. Focusing on more than
just semiconductors, FEEU offers a broader
portfolio of complex electronics solutions
plus consulting services targeting applications
in the automotive, manufacturing and com-
munications sectors.
Hall-Stand 5-210
ept: COM Express connector system
Colibri for 10+ Gbit/s applications
Are you looking to speed up your COM
Express application? Colibri connectors from
ept deliver first-rate signal integrity even at 10
Gbps, making the COM Express connector
system the top choice for your applications
at these speeds and higher. They are ideal for
PCI Express Gen3 applications with 8 Gbps or
10 Gbps Ethernet (10GBase-KR). S-parame-
ters are available on request from ept for use
in simulating your proprietary designs. The
Colibri connector system stands out due to its
rugged design and flexible usability. Both 220-
pin and 440-pin versions for board-to-board
distances of 5 and 8 mm are available. Colibri
is a double-row connector system consisting
of a plug and a receptacle, each of which has
a pitch dimension of 0.5 millimeters. They are
processed using SMT technology, in other
words, soldered directly on the circuit board.
Colibri single connectors feature 220 pins.
Hall-Stand 1-534
Swissbit: newly introduced flash
memory cards and storage families
at embedded world 2016
Swissbit will be exhibiting a number of new
products at embedded world that address the
needs of industrial, automotive and network-
ing/ communications applications. Items
highlighted will include SD and microSD
cards, embedded USB modules and solid
state drives. The event will also signify the
first appearance of Swissbit’s durabit range,
which delivers an unprecedented combina-
tion of performance and endurance in MLC
NAND flash based memory and storage
products.
Hall-Stand 5-360
Infineon: OPTIGA TPM chips protect
latest Microsoft Surface devices
Microsoft puts emphasis on hardware based
security to protect sensitive user data stored
on connected devices. The company integrates
OPTIGA TPMs (Trusted Platform Modules)
from Infineon into its latest personal comput-
ing devices. Among these are the new Surface
Pro 4 tablet and the Surface Book, the first
Microsoft branded laptop.
Embedded World
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