The Scantinel LiDAR chip offers an "unparalleled" level of integration

Lidar startup Scantinel Photonics claims a major technological breakthrough with its latest "massively parallel" photonic integrated circuit (PIC).

The Ulm, Germany-based company, which recently raised €10 million in venture capital, is one of a handful of companies focused on frequently-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) lidar, which is able to sense the position and speed of moving objects around a car.

The approach holds promise for high-volume production of chat-scale lidar sensors for the automotive industry, but relies on more complex engineering and photonic integration than traditional scanning or time-of-flight units.

Integrated laser

Now Scantinel says its second-generation PIC brings it one step closer to producing a single-chip liDAR system.

"Photonic chips offer an exceptional combination of high pixel rate and high signal-to-noise ratio, capable of capturing outstanding high-quality real-world data," the company claims.

"This advance is due to the chip's unparalleled integration, which makes it stand out in the field of liDAR technology and paves the way for the realization of autonomous driving."

Vladimir Davydenko, co-founder of Scantinel, added: "Automotive solid-state scanning lidar requires the integration of detectors, lasers and ultra-low loss solid-state scanners on a single CMOS foundry compatible photonic platform.

"Scantinel Photonics GmbH demonstrates integrated massively parallel detectors and scanning chips that share the same photonic platform as our integrated lasers."

Andy Zott, another co-founder and managing director of the company, said the latest PIC architecture also supports comprehensive in-system calibration, enabling significant cost savings in series production environments by reducing equipment and manufacturing facility floor space requirements. Shorten production time.

Zeiss bloodline

In November, Scantinel said it would use the Series A funding to accelerate product development and launch PIC-based devices to customers. At the time, several partnerships were said to have been signed with "major global automotive, mobility and industrial companies."

Its FMCW technology relies on frequency-chirped laser sources, which are said to have a detection range of more than 300 meters, and the company is backed by Dutch Photonics partner PhotonDelta and optics giant Zeiss.

Davydenko, Zott and co-founder Jan Horn all worked at Zeiss before launching the spin-off company with initial funding from Zeiss Ventures.

Other companies working on FMCW lidar include SiLC Technologies, Aeva and Aurora Innovation. Intel has also set up a research group specifically to study the topic, while Australia's Balaha uses a similar method of random frequency modulation.

But Scantinel claims that the level of integration it achieves gives it a significant advantage over any existing solution in terms of cost and size.

"The launch of Scantinel Photonics' second generation PIC marks a significant step forward in its pursuit of cost-effective and compact liDAR solutions for autonomous driving applications," the company said.

Source: Laser Network