Dashboard cameras (dash cams) have become an essential tool in promoting road safety. By continuously recording everything from routine commutes to high-speed incidents, dash cams contribute to safer roads by holding drivers accountable, leading to more convictions for dangerous driving. The straightforward process of installing a dash cam, coupled with the advantages it offers, has spurred its adoption among road users.
New types of aftermarket cameras are also helping to increase vehicle safety in commercial fleets. For example, driver monitoring systems (DMS) and occupant monitoring systems (OMS) help vehicles ranging from company cars and taxis to delivery vans and large haulage trucks increase safety and accountability by monitoring drivers and their occupants. Consequently, there is now a diverse range of cameras available on the market, addressing the needs of different motorists and businesses alike. This has created a demand for a wide range of dependable image sensors.
The Unique Requirements of Aftermarket Automotive Image Sensors
Image sensors play a vital role in today’s vehicle interiors, particularly in systems like dash cams, driver monitoring systems and occupant monitoring systems. These cameras focus on capturing high-quality footage with minimal complexity, maximizing their appeal to consumers.
While reliability remains crucial for aftermarket camera systems, automotive qualification and associated complexity are not necessary for devices that exist outside of the vehicle’s architecture. Instead, image sensors for aftermarket applications require simple integration, cost-efficient design, and high-quality output under varied conditions. onsemi offers a variety of Hyperlux™ image sensors families that are an ideal solution to meet these aftermarket requirements, while still promoting road safety and enhancing the driving experience.
Hyperlux LH: Elevating Dashboard Cameras
Dash cams must be adaptable, able to capture clear, reliable footage across diverse lighting conditions. Low-light scenes can challenge an image sensor's ability to capture data without introducing excess noise. Likewise, high dynamic range scenes - such as sunsets or oncoming headlights against an otherwise dark backdrop - present a stark contrast between the darkest and lightest areas the sensor must handle.
onsemi’s Hyperlux LH family is designed specifically to meet this demand, offering an advanced triple-exposure embedded High Dynamic Range (eHDR) of up to 120 dB. This includes advanced flexible exposure ratio control, providing exceptional video quality, as well as the ability to capture images in both linear and eHDR modes.
For dash cams, the ability to maintain image clarity regardless of lighting conditions is crucial for documenting every detail, whether it’s for safety, legal purposes, or personal use. When transitioning from glaring sunlight to shaded tunnels, and under city street LED lighting, the Hyperlux LH family’s eHDR feature dynamically adjusts exposure levels, which, combined with the sensor’s effective LED flicker mitigation, prevents both overexposure and the loss of critical details in shadows and flicker from LED lighting.
In addition to its HDR capabilities, onsemi’s high-performance Hyperlux LH sensors also offer excellent low light performance. The stacked back-side illuminated (BSI) CMOS technology and 2.0 µm pixel size deliver exceptional performance in low-light and near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths, ensuring that nighttime details—like road signs, pedestrians and other vehicles—remain clear.
The Hyperlux LH family includes sensors such as the AR0822 8 MP, featuring an active-pixel array supporting 4K video at 60 frames per second (fps). This high resolution ensures that every detail is captured crisply, while the fast frame rate guarantees smooth video, even during high-speed scenes. In addition, the AR0246 2 MP sensor features an adaptive local tone mapping (ALTM) to support low-cost image signal processing (ISP) and delivers excellent image quality. In terms of performance, the Hyperlux LH family is designed to offer simple integration, accurate image representation, and low-power operation, driving the production of a wide range of dash cams.
Hyperlux SG: Enhancing Driver Safety with Advanced Driver Monitoring Systems (DMS)
While some vehicles come factory-equipped with DMS, the majority of cars and trucks on the market lack these features. Consequently, aftermarket solutions are gaining popularity, particularly in fleet management, as a cost-effective means to enhance in-cabin safety. These systems add an extra layer of protection by actively recording and monitoring the driver and occupants within the vehicle.
DMS cameras utilize highly responsive image sensors to accurately track driver behaviors, such as head movements, eye gaze, and facial expressions, to detect signs of distraction or drowsiness. Upon identifying these conditions, the system can emit an alert sound to warn the driver, potentially preventing an accident.
onsemi’s AR0145 1 MP and AR0235 2.3 MP sensors, part of the Hyperlux SG family, are popular choices for DMS applications. These sensors feature an innovative global shutter pixel design optimized for capturing moving scenes with clarity, producing clear, low-noise images even in challenging lighting conditions. In DMS applications, this capability allows for the detection of subtle movements, such as eye movement—a critical indicator of drowsiness. For camera designers, onsemi’s products offer a comprehensive solution, with image sensors that incorporate advanced camera modes, including auto exposure control, windowing, row skip mode, column skip mode, pixel-binning, and both video and single-frame modes.
Hyperlux LP: Enhancing In-Cabin Safety with Occupant Monitoring System (OMS)
Aftermarket OMS cameras use image sensors backed with machine vision algorithms to detect and classify objects, including adults, children, and inanimate objects, within the cabin. To ensure accurate detection even in dimly lit cabins, normally, the camera will switch from color to mono with IR-cut. However, during movement, IR-Cut is easily damaged. To overcome this problem, RGB-IR image sensors are widely used for OMS cameras. The main advantage of RGB-IR sensors is that they can eliminate IR-cut in normal cameras used for switching from daytime to nighttime.
To meet this requirement, onsemi’s Hyperlux LP series, including the AR0544 5 MP and AR0830 8 MP sensors, offer RGB-IR variants with exceptional image quality, even at night. The sensors feature a 1.4 µm BSI pixel configuration, providing excellent functionality in low-light and near-infrared (NIR) regions, enabling them to identify occupant traits like presence, positioning, and minor movements. This ensures consistent monitoring across different lighting conditions, from bright daylight to dim cabin lights at night. All of these features contribute to creating a highly personalized and secure environment for drivers and passengers, offering tailored in-cabin functionality.
Aftermarket cameras are straightforward upgrades that have the potential to significantly increase road safety, but they depend on specialized image sensors such as those from onsemi to operate correctly. onsemi’s Hyperlux image sensor families feature advanced capabilities, including eHDR, RGB-IR, and up to 4K resolution, enabling engineers to create energy-efficient aftermarket automotive cameras that provide exceptional clarity regardless of lighting conditions.
Additional Resources
Cutting−Edge Global Shutter Image Sensors for High−Speed Applications
Low Power Image Sensors Revolutionize Vision System Design and Efficiency
