Gasgoo Awards 2022 applicant: Solid-State LiDAR Sensing Chip from Fortsense

For the Gasgoo Awards 2022, High Resolution Solid-State LiDAR Sensing Chip from Shenzhen Fortsense Co., Ltd. has applied for the Top 100 Players of China's New Automotive Supply Chain. 

Photo credit: Fortsense

Product: High Resolution Solid-State LiDAR Sensing Chip

Description

It is a solid-state lidar based on the direct time-of-flight (dToF) technology, which measures the time difference from the light emission to the light reflection, calculating the object’s distance. dToF technology enables the ranging, imaging, and modeling of the three-dimensional natural environment. The working principle of dToF technology is simple, offering a long effective detection distance. The advantages of dToF also include high accuracy, low energy consumption, simple depth information calculation, and strong anti-interference ability.

Photo credit: Fortsense

Unique advantages

Fortsense is the world's leading SPAD sensor chip provider for LiDAR. Based on the substantial research and continuous R&D of lidar systems, Fortsense is becoming a critically important role in the new-generation auto industry. Fortsense focuses on developing SPAD devices with unique architectures, iteration, and the performance metrics such as PDE, DCR, Crosstalk, and Afterpulsing. Fortsense is capable to provide sensor chips based on 10-25um SPADs size types with BSI structure, and it is reaching a breakthrough for 7um development. The active matrix SPAD sensor chip integrates a randomly encoded transmit driver circuit and decoding algorithm, which greatly improves the reliability of LiDAR. The active matrix SPAD sensor chip supports the detection of up to five target objects surrounding as high as 100K Lux ambient light, unaffected by variable reflectivity. The high-resolution matrix sensor chip integrates data compression function to ensure lossless high-speed transmission of the original data.

● The photoelectric gain of SPAD is more than 10⁶, which is very sensitive and suitable for the detection of weak echo signals under long-distance ranging

● SPAD is compatible with the CMOS Fab process, with high yield and low cost

● SPAD detector can be arranged in different formats, e.g. single/integrated form, linear lines, or area arrays

● The working voltage of SPAD is generally 20-30V, which is adapted to various chips

● Digital output of SPAD can be processed through a comparator and TDC (time-to-digital converter), reducing the peripheral components and simplifying the system drastically

● High reliability and straightforward format of the product make the verification duration as short as 4~6 months.

Application

ADAS, autonomous driving, intelligent driving, C-V2X, low-speed vehicles, robots, AR/VR, etc. 

Prospects

Since 2016, the scale of the global LiDAR industry has shown a rapid expansion trend year by year, and the growth rate has basically remained above 30%. It can be seen that in the future, LiDAR has a lot of room for improvement in consumer electronics, machine vision, unmanned driving, AR/VR, and other fields. LiDAR has become a key component of ADAS and navigation. LiDAR is widely used in the field of navigation, such as robots, drone obstacle avoidance, and intelligent vehicle driving.