Trends

Growth Trends in the Area of Multimedia Applications in Vehicles Trend 1: Multimedia applications moving increasingly into mid-range segments Trend 2: More components are being installed in each vehicle Trend 3: Components are increasingly being networked with each other Current Cabling is Reaching its Physical Limits Bandwidth is increasing for A/V applications Increasing electromagnetic emissions need to be reduced Weight and volume are becoming critical factors

In the modern automobile, the analog wire harness and analog architectures will become obsolete just as many other familiar applications have made the transition from analog to digital schemes. A quick examination of historical trends in major consumer applications shows this point:

MOST technology brought the digital revolution to the car. It is the fundamental backbone for all digital multimedia systems in automobiles and consumer electronics. Its advantages over traditional means of control and communication are extensive and will be outlined in detail throughout the following sections.

The illustration below shows a traditional electronic infotainment systems in a vehicle:

Traditional Electronic Peripherals

The traditional model for car electronics takes into account the simple devices we all take for granted today. Surprisingly, even with a relatively limited number of peripherals, the traditional analog wire harness becomes very complex and costly. To add a CD changer in the trunk of a car often creates a wiring debacle: left and right audio signal cables and a multi-wire control bus must all be connected from the radio to the trunk. This seemingly trivial addition of only one peripheral adds considerable cost, weight and complexity to the automobile. In some cases, automotive designers are struggling to find space for all components due to the large size of the wiring running throughout the vehicle. It is also very difficult to expand or modify the system since all components typically have to be specifically designed to work with each other.

The traditional approach is also expensive to implement. Many costly connectors and cables are required to implement the design. Tons of cables are transported over the streets worldwide - a lot of them not even used by the currently assembled infrastructure.

A quick reality check makes the fact clear: The number of peripherals in an automobile is constantly growing. The standard equipment of today's car is illustrated below.

Modern automotive peripherals

Clearly, the traditional model with a complex wiring harness and connectors, antiquated control and thick, heavy copper wire will not serve the needs of modern automotive peripherals. The solution is an intelligent high-speed network combined with an inexpensive, proven signal transportation media. The solution is MOST!

MOST's features make it suitable for any application that needs to network multimedia information along with data and control functions. With MOST technology, all control and signal information is full digital and transported via a high speed network carried over ONE medium. Two physical layer media are currently available: the plastic optical fiber (POF) and the unshielded twisted pair (UTP) cable. One obvious benefit of optical fiber is that it is very light. Some modern cars have several kilometers of wire running through them; converting to POF can increase fuel efficiency, ease of manufacturing, and overall reliability by reducing the total number of connections required to perform the same functions. To use only one (electrical) medium for wiring, the UTP cable can be used. Low implementation costs for 50 Mbits/s multimedia networking speed make this selection efficient too.