Melexis has introduced the MLX75026 with IRBP, an AEC-Q100 rated QVGA time-of-flight sensor that expands Melexis' third generation of ToF sensors. The integrated infrared bandpass filter eliminates the need for a separate bandpass filter, simplifying design and manufacturing while increasing the selection of suitable, infrared-friendly lenses.
The MLX75026 targets automotive use cases such as driver monitoring (DMS), in-cabin monitoring, gesture control, safety applications related to airbag deployment, driver alignment with the head-up display (HUD), and industrial applications such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs), elevator entry, and (collaborative) robotics.
“An IR filter is mandatory in all Time-of-Flight (ToF) applications to reduce out-of-band infrared light in the operating environment, which could otherwise reduce the sensor’s dynamic range,” explains Gualtiero Bagnuoli, director of optical sensor marketing at Melexis. “A separate filter adds cost and complexity to a design, but by using the MLX75026 with an IRBP filter, engineers can avoid both cost and complexity and more easily explore the advantages of time-of-flight sensing.”.
Integrating the correct IR bandpass filter is not trivial: the passband must be matched to the lighting conditions, and the filter must accept a specific wavelength. Melexis is the only ToF sensor manufacturer currently offering this option, which is now available as a variant of the MLX75026. The MLX75026 offers software compatibility with other Melexis Gen 3 ToF sensors.
The MLX75026 with IRBP filter has a QVGA resolution (320x240 pixels) with a 1/4-inch optical format and supports 940 nm illumination. The configuration is implemented via an I2C interface and provides CSI-2 serial data output. The sensor's high integration, small size, and low power consumption, along with the integrated bandpass IR filters, enable the design of compact and cost-effective Time-of-Flight (ToF) cameras for automotive, industrial, and consumer applications.
Samples of the MLX75026 with IRBP filter are now available. A high-performance, compact evaluation kit (EVK) will also be released.
The EVK75026+, which incorporates a Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSoC, quadruples the data bandwidth and frame rate of the previous EVK75026 evaluation kit while occupying approximately half the mechanical size. It offers advanced pixel calibration and filtering capabilities, as well as on-demand support for sophisticated features such as ambiguous range expansion, multipath resolution, and interference rejection. The programming interface (API), written in C, includes wrappers that allow the kit to be used with both Matlab and Python.
