Advanced LiDAR Driver
Silanna’s portfolio of components for LiDAR and rangefinder applications significantly reduces the power required to implement such systems: from automotive LiDAR to battery-powered rangefinders.
Silanna’s Laser Driver SOCs integrate a proprietary charging circuit, GaN drivers, timing control and fault detection to ensure compliance with eye safety regulations
These first-of-their-kind products enable the most energy-efficient technology to implement time-of-flight (ToF) systems using EEL (Edge Emitting Laser) and VCSELs (Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser) and enable the smallest BOM versus any competing system.
A More Efficient, Lower BOM LiDAR
Versus a traditional LiDAR driver (left), the Silanna LiDAR driver lowers system losses and eliminates multiple discrete components to enable the lowest BOM of any LiDAR system
Traditional resonant solutions require high supply voltages on the supply capacitor (Csupply) to achieve the required energy. This necessitates the integration of an external boost voltage regulator into the system and therefore isolation for both the filter (Cfilter) and supply capacitors.
Transferring energy between these capacitors will be 50% efficient (or less) and requires a GaN driver, with the timing for the GaN driver managed separately.
This means LiDAR drivers have required a large, costly BOM to implement and are far from efficient.
Silanna’s approach eliminates the need for the GaN driver, the isolator, the external boost voltage regulator and the filter capacitor and integrates both fault sensing and reporting and timing and control. Taking this approach not only eliminates multiple discrete components from the system, but also removes the efficiency losses between capacitors.
Silanna SL2001 LiDAR Driver SoC
The SL2001 uses a flexible architecture that can provide laser FWHM pulses of less than 2 ns and uses a dual GaN/MOS drive to support peak laser of more than 400 W.
The SoC has a high charging efficiency from a single supply (3 – 24 V), a synchronous integration of capacitor charging/laser firing and a time error jitter of less than 0.1 ns
Samples will be available in Q1 2025, for further information please contact Silanna.
LiDAR Drive Evaluation boards
Silanna has developed a 80 mm2 evaluation board which contains all components to fire a laser from a 5 V VDD and 3-24V VIN.
Based on the SL2001, this this provides laser FWHM pulses of less than 2 ns and supports peak laser of more than 400 W from a single 3 – 24 V supply and has a time error jitter of less than 0.1 ns
Boards will be available in H1 2025, for further information please contact Silanna.
Availability
Silanna will ship alpha samples of its SL2001 Laser Driver SOC in late Q1 2025, with beta samples available in Q2 and production quantities from Q3.