TECHNOLOGY/R&D & INNOVATION
TowerJazz Advanced Power, CMOS Image Sensor and Analog RF Manufacturing Technologies Address ADAS and Autonomous Driving Requirements
TowerJazz is addressing the growing demand for analog devices in the automotive market through leading technology solutions and close partnerships with market leaders as well as roadmap alignment with our customers and world-class global support.
According to MarketsandMarkets, automotive semiconductor content will be dominated by analog with 69% share. The increasing demand for automobiles with enhanced features such as wireless connectivity, radar, cameras, LED headlights and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) as well as the overall trend of vehicle electrification is driving the growth of this market.
TowerJazz offers many leading technologies to address the growing requirements of analog ICs for automotive in the areas of power management, CMOS image sensors and RF & high-performance analog. Below is a brief overview of each technology area.
Power Management
Starting from motor controls and drivers to LED headlights and LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to 48V power architecture in new cars, TowerJazz is supporting leading automotive customers with our differentiated technologies using bulk and SOI processes. Our power management technology offers high integration capabilities using dense digital libraries with a large portfolio of memories (both OTP and MTP). The technology has best in class switching power transistors with low Rdson for supporting high efficiency designs for voltages ranging from 1.8V up to 200V. We offer 200V SOI and 140V bulk together with additional isolations schemes all with high reliability, high temperature modeling and robust ESD solutions. We offer fast switching devices for smaller BOM size and are extending our technology platform by partnering with leading automotive customers. We work closely with our customers to customize devices per their needs to best perform in the automotive market. Our platform flexibility allows customers to reuse their existing circuits to reduce design time and lower the risk. TowerJazz has qualified all major power management flows in at least two geographically distinct production sites to ensure customers of supply at all times.
CMOS Image Sensors (CIS)
In recent years, camera based sensors have started to perform wide ranging tasks such as road signs detection, lane departure warning, light beam control, parking assist (front/side/rear cameras) and even driver monitoring. While camera based sensors provide exceptional lateral resolution of the surroundings in well-lit or medium-lit conditions, their performance deteriorates rapidly in harsher conditions such as in the dark, rain, fog or snow. Two complementary imaging technologies overcome these impediments: infrared imaging and LiDAR. Infra-red thermal imaging provides superior sensitivity in harsh conditions albeit lower resolution, and laser based LiDAR provides 3D imaging of the surroundings with remarkable spatial resolution and distance measurement accuracy. These sensors work together to offer the driver a complete image of the surroundings. TowerJazz offers all three types of image sensor solutions. Our low dark current 4T, 5T, and the latest, 6T global shutter pixels enable imaging with high dynamic range (up to 120dB and even beyond), high frame rate and up to 4K ultra high definition cameras. MEMS-based bolometer technology offers excellent low-light IR thermal imaging capability. And finally, best-in-class active-gated pixels and single photon avalanche photodiode (SPAD) technologies enable industry-leading Time of Flight (ToF) sensing for LiDAR applications. TowerJazz offers CIS foundry solutions on both 200mm and 300mm wafer sizes, and in four of our fabs on three continents.
RF and HPA (High-Performance Analog)
Radar drives a large portion of the automotive RF semiconductor content today, while connectivity solutions are seeing rapid growth as well. Because of the high performance needed at high frequencies for automotive radar (24 – 26GHz for short-range and 76-81GHz for long range), TowerJazz’s SiGe Terabit Platform is ideally suited to serve this exciting and growing market. Our SBC18H2 through SBC18H5 SiGe technologies offer Ft of 240 — 300GHz and Fmax of 280 — 340GHz, offering customers latitude to trade off speed and noise requirements for their specific applications. Our SiGe Terabit Platform comes with two CMOS options: 1.8V/3.3V (180nm) and 1.2V/3.3V (130nm). All our SiGe technologies offer customizable metallization schemes and high-performance passives (MIM capacitors and inductors) to tailor the offering to each customer’s specific end-application. For more cost-sensitive applications, we offer a complete 65nm RFCMOS technology platform in our Uozu, Japan factory. For wireless connectivity solutions, we offer a front-end module on-a-chip RF platform in addition to advanced RFSOI and RFCMOS technology offerings with best-in-class Ron-Coff for switches and noise figures for low-noise amplifiers.
For more information on any of these process offerings, please visit here.
