LiDAR Systems Performance vs. ADC ENOB

Does your LiDAR have required operation range? Have you considered various applications and its required LiDAR range into your product definitions?

The following plot illustrates the ADC impacts on the range and error for few applications.

The plot reveals as the range, consequently its error increase, required ENOB increases. Is your product defined and specified ENOB adequately which can meet the end user needs and requirements? The customer does not necessarily know about the technical impact and expect the supplier to provide a solution which meets their need.

How about the ADC clock rate or sampling rate/frequency? Have you considered what would be the optimum frequency? Do you have a frequency planning for the ASIC/SoC? When your product gets selected to interface with other system (smart phone, automotive, etc.), that frequency planning could cause make or break the deal. Have you considered the margin/tolerances for each parameter in a such way that operationally withstand part to part (process), voltage, and temperature variations, i.e., collectively known as P.V.T. corners for that application? There is a 1 x 10 x 100 rule in design and development of any product. Every dollar that is assumed to be saved during the product definitions and design, could cost you 10x more if there is one missing specification, once the product enters development phase. If by any chance, that product makes it to production phase, that one missing specification would cost 100x to be fixed. Going back to drawing board and find a “kludge” for implementing and/or beefing up one specification that end user cannot live without is costly and could break the deal. Re-spinning an ASIC is way more costly than HW. Also, every re-spin drives more HW/FW/SW changes within your organization. That implies one change in silicon has a rippling effect in HW/FW/SW changes for the customer integration platform. The end user may also have to go through HW/FW/SW changes to accommodate and benefit that one silicon change. Leverage experienced product definer and technology SME to join your team.

ORTENGA helps businesses to identify required technical features to realize their business goals.