MIPI Alliance expands reach with new automotive working group

The MIPI Alliance, an international organization that develops interface specifications for mobile and mobile-influenced industries, today announced the formation of the MIPI Automotive Working Group (AWG) to address the needs of the automotive ecosystem. The group is open to MIPI Contributor members.

As the number of sensors continues to increase in the automobile to support passive and active safety, infotainment, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving systems, the need for interface specifications is apparent. Building upon the success of the MIPI Alliance Automotive Subgroup and Automotive Birds of a Feather (BoF) Group, the MIPI Board of Directors has approved the creation of the MIPI AWG.

“The approval of the MIPI Automotive Working Group marks a significant milestone for MIPI Alliance’s development activity,” said Joel Huloux, chairman of MIPI Alliance. “While MIPI’s focus is foremost on developing interface specifications for mobile devices, automakers already rely on MIPI’s industry-standard interfaces to enable a wide variety of applications. This additional focus on automotive is a natural extension to broaden MIPI specifications’ applicability.”

Collaborate with other MIPI working groups

The first focus of the group will be to collaborate with other MIPI working groups on a new automotive physical layer specification for longer reach applications. This work will build upon the success of MIPI Alliance’s development of high-speed physical layer specifications that serve as essential interconnection in mobile and other devices. In addition, the group will look at other existing MIPI specifications and determine their adaptability to automotive use cases.

“We look forward to working with MIPI working groups and the MIPI Auto BoF to bring together automotive ecosystem requirements to support a high-speed serial data link,” said Matt Ronning, chair of the MIPI AWG. “MIPI’s Automotive Working Group will help align key interfaces for cameras, lidars, radars, displays and more with OEMs’ specific requirements in automotive. As new MIPI interfaces are developed, while rooted in mobile, they will now also have an eye toward automotive.”

“Standardization of all interfaces between subsystems, like surround sensors, and ECUs (electronic control units) is a prerequisite of modular concepts for automotive systems,” said Uwe Beutnagel-Buchner, vice chair of the MIPI AWG. “Additionally automotive systems stand to benefit from standardized interfaces to meet development, cost, testing and reliability requirements. Highly sensitive, mission-critical automotive applications also benefit from MIPI interfaces’ low electromagnetic interference (EMI), a capability that’s been proven in billions of mobile phones and other handheld devices.”