Osram opens 2021 by expanding its portfolio and investing in products that can increasingly meet the daily needs of consumers and workshops.
LiDAR is a key technology in the development of autonomous vehicles.
In combination with radar and camera systems, it acts as a vision of the car that captures its surroundings.
LiDAR, short for Light Detection and Ranging, uses infrared light to create a precise three-dimensional map of the environment.
Thebetter this visual information is, the easier it is for downstream systems to use it.
Until now, infrared lasers used for this purpose have deviations in wavelength stability of up to 40 nanometers as the temperature in the component increases.
As a result, the "vision" of the LiDAR system was a bit blurry. A new chip design from Osram now reduces the wavelength shift to just ten nanometers, ensuring much clearer and sharper images of the surrounding environment.
Thanks to the newly developed chip design, the edge emitters can match and even exceed the wavelength stability of VCSELs at operating temperatures up to 125° C typical of automotive applications.
This technological milestone in the development of infrared lasers allows the use of a much smaller wavelength filter on the detector, which significantly improves the signal-to-noise ratio.
This technological advancement has already been demonstrated in components with "triple junction", for example, three light-emitting surfaces stacked on top of each other.
In the future, it will be used in all Osram infrared lasers and will offer huge advantages to LiDAR system manufacturers.
