New Night Vision LED to Integrate in Automotive Systems

New Night Vision LED to Integrate in Automotive Systems

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An extremely compact high-power Synios IRED for automotive applications is now offered by Osram Opto Semiconductors.

The new infrared LED reduces the size of lighting units for camera-based assistance systems in cars.

Compared to the Platinum Dragon previously used, Synios SFH offers 25 percent higher optical output and needs only about one tenth of the footprint, according to the company’s website.

Osram presented its first Synios infrared LED (IRED) for the consumer market only last year. Now the component is suitable also for use in vehicles.

The main applications for this IRED with a wavelength of 850 nanometers (nm) are infrared lighting units for camera systems that monitor the outside environment of the car. These systems include night vision assistants and forward collision detection systems such as pedestrian protection solutions that work with camera images. Flooding the scene in front of the vehicle with infrared light enables the vehicle environment to be reliably detected even in the dark or in poor weather conditions. Unlike laser-based assistance systems, which work with pulsed light, the above-mentioned systems tend to use permanent light sources.

The new product will replace the established Dragon family in these applications.

The Synios is also a Lambertian radiator which is ideal for reflector-based systems. The Synios package measures 2.75 x 2.0 x 0.6 mm, making it considerably smaller than that of the Dragon; in particular it requires only about one tenth of the footprint. Its thermal conductivity has not changed however, and its thermal resistance is still typically 6 kelvin per watt (K/W). Designers can therefore create much smaller systems with the same thermal management.

Thanks to higher optical output fewer components are needed to produce the same brightness levels, which in turn reduces system costs still further.