Addressing thermal design challenges for autonomous vehicle LIDARs

With announcements from a large number of automakers to commercialize autonomous cars by 2021, number and variety of sensors in vehicles are poised to grow significantly posing new challenges for vehicle engineering for automakers and suppliers. At the same time, designing for harsh automotive environments with significantly higher reliability and safety requirements is a new challenge for many electronics companies who have an opportunity to disrupt the automotive industry. Design, performance and reliability of LIDARs, a key sensor critical to offer a robust 360° vision to autonomous cars, are impacted by its thermal behavior.

This white paper is aimed at highlighting thermal-driven design challenges for LIDARs as well as impact of vehicle integration strategy on reliability in real-world operation. We’ll showcase how electronics thermal characterization and simulation tools offer the functionality and accuracy that engineers can rely on to address such challenges.