Automotive Gigabit Ethernet: Successful Accomplishment of H2020 Project

Carlos Pardo presents KDPOF’s technology at the Automotive Ethernet Congress

KDPOF proudly announces the successful completion of the H2020 Project, a considerable EU Research and Innovation program running from 2014 to 2020. KDPOF’s target was to take the next steps into replicating and validating their Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) technology to implement and standardize a robust solution in the automotive industry after having successfully launched and qualified a family of ASICs for the consumer and professional markets. “Our goal was to design, develop, validate, and pre-qualify an ASIC for gigabit communications over POF for automotive applications,” explained Carlos Pardo, CEO and Co-founder of KDPOF. The purpose of the project was to undertake the product development process with a quality approach that guarantees compliance to the automotive industry’s requirements. “The successful development and validation of a gigabit POF transceiver that demonstrates functional, performance, and reliability compliance for automotive applications represents a major breakthrough in a new communications standard for the automotive industry.”

KDPOF’s chip and its production processes meet the specific requirements of the car industry, such as low failure rates. In addition, KDPOF has pre-qualified the IC in an automotive environment, and integrated and demonstrated it within a full data communications solution for the automotive industry. “We are proud to have completely achieved all our objectives with various tasks, milestones, and deliverables finished and submitted to the European Agency as planned,” added Carlos Pardo. “Thanks to our qualified expert team, the ASIC design, development, validation, characterization, and pre-qualification process have been completely carried out.”

Complete Design Process with Verification and Prototypes Up to Customer Implementation

Since the H2020 project started in April 2015, KDPOF has perfectly and successfully finalized the entire ASIC design process, including ASIC emulation, verification, prototype manufacturing and packaging, and the functional assessment characterization tests and pre-qualification tests. KDPOF has engaged in three different standardization projects: OPEN Alliance, IEEE: P802.3-bv, and ISO 21111 standard series. Overall, the project included numerous achievements:

1. KDPOF has validated the specific KDPOF automotive Gigabit transceiver KD1053 including its design and specific adaptations.
2. Automotive stakeholders have pre-qualified KDPOF’s 1 Gbps optical network technology.
3. KDPOF technology has been successfully integrated and demonstrated within an in-car data communications solution with various potential automotive customers. From this deployment, KDPOF has received important feedback regarding electro-magnetic compatibility (EMC) of the ASIC.
4. The engagement with OEMs results in follow-up steps to achieve a 1Gbps standard for in-car data communications. KDPOF technology is currently being integrated into at least one real communications application through a European Tier1 into a new automotive platform under development.
5. KDPOF has set up a comprehensive investor-ready business plan.