The new Cypress Automotive LED driver enables the most compact front lighting system in the industry

     Leds are increasingly being used in automotive front lighting systems, pushing the forecast demand for LED drivers to 120 million units in 2020. With their advantages in power consumption, cost and size, leds have become a common choice for headlights, daytime running lights, width lights, fog lights and turn signals. Cypress Semiconductor has introduced a new LED driver that enables a more compact and cost-effective LED front lighting system. The unique feature of this automotive LED driver is the ability to drive a single LED at a switching frequency of 2.1-MHz, enabling a compact solution using a small, inexpensive inductor that reduces the physical size of the system and reduces the cost of material (BOM).

     Kiyoe Nagaya, vice president of Simulation at Cypress, said: "Compared to traditional light bulbs, leds consume less power and are smaller in size, giving automakers the flexibility to create iconic lighting effects for their vehicles. Cypress's highly competitive LED drive solution eliminates the need for large and expensive inductors to drive a single LED, raising the bar for automotive front lighting systems."

     In addition, Cypress's new S6BL111A automotive LED driver supports an input voltage range of 4.5-42 V and ADAPTS to extreme operating conditions such as cold start (excessive current caused by starting a car engine at a low temperature) and load drop (surge voltage occurs when the battery is disconnected during engine operation and powered by an alternator). The S6BL111A is a single-channel 1A output LED driver that supports analog and PWM dimming for fine brightness control. The switching frequency of the driver can be set between 205kHz and 2.1MHz, and the output current accuracy is up to +/- 2%. The drive also provides system safety features such as overcurrent and overvoltage protection, which contributes to the protection design of electrical systems; In addition, it blocks annoying LED OPEN diagnostics during cold starts.

     Cypress offers kits to help designers evaluate their automotive LED technology. The Automotive LED Driver Evaluation Kit (CYALKIT-L01, CYALKIT-L02) contains an S6BL111A driver, multiple vehicle-grade peripheral components, multiple external pins to facilitate test points to monitor waveforms, and PCB schematic templates to assist with circuit replacement and component addition.