ROHM has recently announced the availability of the world’s smallest LDO regulators designed for automotive safety modules requiring greater reliability and increased miniaturization, such as sensors, cameras, and radars in ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) applications.
In recent years, the proliferation of accident prevention measures and automated driving systems are demanding advanced safety systems that deliver higher performance. This increases the number of sensors, camera modules, and other mounted components required, but at the same time there is a need to decrease part size to improve design flexibility and reduce vehicle weight. Until now, however, it has been difficult to design power supply ICs that deliver high reliability in a compact form factor. As a result, given the harsh environment automotive systems are subjected to, including increased noise, temperature, and vibration, the smallest package size that can still provide the necessary level of reliability has been 1.5mm2.
In response, ROHM leverages a vertically integrated production system along with proprietary analog design, process, and package technologies to achieve the smallest form factor in the industry. The AEC-Q100 qualified BUxxJA2MNVX-Cseries provides automotive-grade reliability in an ultra-compact 1mm2 package, decreasing mounting area by 55% over the existing 1.5mm2 products. At the same time, current consumption and response characteristics are reduced by half (35uA circuit current, 65mV load fluctuation), contributing to smaller, higher performance automotive safety modules. Also, unlike conventional products that require an external capacitance of at least 1.0uF to prevent oscillation, these new regulators support smaller external capacitors as low as 0.22uF, enabling further miniaturization.