Design high density and low cost Lidar system with new laser driver IC

     High Efficiency Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) has introduced the EPC21701, a laser driver that integrates 80V, 40A FETs with gate drivers and 3.3 logic level inputs into a single chip for ToF lidar systems in robots, surveillance systems and vacuum cleaners. It targets lidar systems for gesture recognition, ToF measurement, robotic vision or industrial safety.

     The laser driver uses a 5V supply voltage and uses 3.3V logic control. It is capable of modulating laser-driven currents up to 15A at extremely high frequencies above 50MHz and short pulses as low as 2ns. The voltage switching time is less than 1ns, and the input-output delay time is less than 3.6ns. The device is a single-chip driver and GaN FET that uses the company's proprietary GaN IC technology with a chip-level BGA size of only 1.7mm x 1mm x 0.68mm. Wafer-level packages have small size, low inductance and good layout with laser systems. Due to this small size and integration of many functions, the overall solution on the PCB is 36% smaller than an equivalent multi-chip discrete implementation. The device complements the ToF driver IC family in the CSP and includes 40V, 15a EPC21601 and 40V, 10A EPC21603 options.

     This product family facilitates faster adoption and better adoption of ToF solutions across a wider range of end-user applications. "This new GaN family of ics dramatically improves performance while reducing the size and cost of time-of-flight Lidar systems," said Alex Lidow, CEO and co-founder of EPC. "Integrating GaN FeTs with drivers on a single chip can generate powerful and fast ics with reduced size and cost for a wide range of consumer and industrial applications. With EPC21701, we extend our product range to 80 V and 15 A, and will soon expand further to 100 V and 125 A." The EPC9172 development board provides the EPC21701 eToF laser driver IC, which is primarily used to drive laser diodes with short, high current pulses. Features include a minimum pulse width of < 2ns, the peak current is 15A, and the bus voltage is rated at 40V.