César Esteban, Application and Support Manager of KDPOF, is demonstrating a Proof-of-Concept of an automotive optical surround view system: the four cameras on top of a demo car are transmitting video data at 100 Megabits per second to their corresponding media converters. The media converters are converting from copper to optical: one, two, three, and four, one for each camera. The blinking green LED on the media converter indicates that the data traffic is running through. The orange LED shows that the optical link is at 100 Mbps. The traffic is sent to this optical GEPOF (Gigabit Ethernet Plastic Optical Fiber) switch, which has five ports. The four left ports are in orange because these are from the cameras with 100 Mbps each. The green LED on the right is the GEPOF link with 1 Gigabit per second. It is linked to this fifth media converter that is aggregating the traffic of the four cameras. The four video sequences are transmitted to a PC, which functions as display unit. The four streams are displayed simultaneously. The hosted hub consists of the GEPOF switch and five media converters.

Connected cars are being equipped with increasingly sophisticated systems such as high performance computers, a growing number of ADAS sensors including hires cameras, radars, lidars, and HMIs such as 4K screens and head-up displays. Thus, data rates go up to 20 Gbps. In addition, highly electrified powertrains imply electromagnetic interferences. Watch our brand-new video and learn how optical connectivity solves these issues and moves high-speed connectivity forward.

In order to improve our services and provide a short line of communication in Central Europe, Jürgen Schachtschneider and Markus Dittmann have recently joined the KDPOF team. Jürgen Schachtschneider focusses on Automotive Business Development for Central Europe and Greater China. He is an expert in the automotive electronics industry who has held positions as Vice President of NXP and Nexperia.

Markus Dittmann supports KDPOF as Fiber Optics Connectivity R&D engineer. He has previously been R&D Product Development Engineer/Project Coordinator with TE Connectivity and Harman/Becker. As a technical project manager, he is responsible for effective cooperation with suppliers and partners in development projects in which connection solutions play an important role in the overall system. In addition to his responsibility for development activities with manufacturers of optical connectors for automotive Ethernet cable sets, Markus Dittmann is also involved in management, design, production testing and standardization activities.