Himax Technologie, a specialist supplier and fabless manufacturer of display drivers and other semiconductor products, unveiled its latest liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) technology, phase modulation LCoS, for two key application platforms, namely AR Head-Up Display (“AR HUD”) used as holographic display for automotive, and Wavelength Selective Switch (“WSS”) for Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (“WDM”)optical communications networks.
AR HUD using holographic display offers intuitive multi-focal planes viewing experience
Himax demonstrated an AR HUD platform using its phase modulation LCoS as holographic display that offers
more compelling visual experience than conventional HUD solution. The AR HUD not only provides brighter and
higher contrast images, but also displays multi-focal plane images concurrently along with less power
consumption, lower cost and smaller form factor.
For the use case with two focal planes of AR HUD in automotive, the information displayed on the dashboard is projected directly onto the windshield in the driver’s line of sight with focus at 50 cm. Another long-range plane focused around 10 meters fuses augmented reality information, such as navigation map and driving instructions, with far field real world images for the driver to see intuitively on windshield. The AR HUD also features a proprietary Computer Generated Holographic engine for real time augmented reality information fusion as well as image distortion adjustment to fit for different windshield curvatures.
WSS triggers flexible high-bandwidth data manipulation
Inside a state-of-the-art WSS system of WDM network, phase modulation LCoS disperses and switches the
incident laser light into separate ports without a digital de-multiplexor. The simplification of the switching architecture could achieve a better, more flexible wavelength grid to efficiently manipulate the data routing.
In addition, the phase modulation LCoS panel of Himax WSS platform provides a stable 2-pi control with no ripple noise at 1550 nm wavelength. All of these features have made Himax WSS platform offering an extremely stable switching mechanism with higher bandwidth to the optical communication industry.
“AR HUD will be one of the next key features in automotive. Himax’s phase modulation LCoS enables multi-focal
holographic displays in automotive AR HUD and will disrupt the common standard of HUD today. Meanwhile,
with the proliferation of 5G, our proposed WSS system, where our phase modulation LCoS is the heart of the
system, is well-positioned to offer higher data bandwidth to the communication backbone,” said Mr. Jordan Wu,
President and Chief Executive Officer at Himax. “We are a company who believes in innovation. Answering to
the challenging requirements in automotive and communication industries, our engineers take advantage of our
world-leading LCoS technology and push the technological envelop to create new and innovative solutions for
our future customers.”
The design and production of Himax’s LCoS displays span well over a decade and were included in the products
of some of the world’s top tech names for the mass market. Himax currently maintains an in-house LCoS
production facility in Taiwan which has a proven shipping record of up to 300,000 units per month and could be scalable up to 2 million units per month at its current location.
