WATCH: Cooled Optics for High Performance Automotive LiDAR

Phononic recently had an opportunity to present during the Virtual Automotive LiDAR Conference that took place September 21-23, 2021.

Alex Guichard, Ph.D. & Phononic’s VP of Product Marketing, presented Phononic’s recent market trends and challenges in the automotive LiDAR market.

During the presentation, Alex highlighted the current industry challenges including tradeoffs between detection range, resolution, field of view, and frame rate. With Phononic TECs active cooling you can accurately control laser temperature, locking wavelength stability and allow for higher power required by long range systems like 1550nm FMCW sensors. By temperature stabilizing the source and receiver you improve signal to noise, enabling the use of filters that reduce ambient interference increasing sensitivity, resulting in accurate long-distance imaging.

Phononic TECs reduce the effective operating temperature, a major challenge affecting operating reliability and temperature requirements. By reducing the effective operating temperature range, TECs also improve reliability and long-term lifetime of the laser and detector.

Phononic application specific TECs are available for a broad range of laser powers and heat loads, supporting heat loads both below and above 10W, which support the critical need for precise temperature control for long-range LiDAR optical components.

Benefits of utilizing Phononic TECs for cooled optics:

• End the tradeoffs between detection range, resolution, field of view, and frame rate.
• Ensure immunity to ambient interference.
• Enable automotive-grade reliability across an extremely wide temperature range.

You can watch Alex’s full presentation here: Cooled Optics for High Performance Automotive LiDAR

If you are interested in receiving a copy of the presentation, please reach out to Dwayne Holst, Director of Product Marketing: [email protected]