LiDAR:Valeo SCALA2 (Mercedes-Benz S-class (2022)) Teardown Report
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Overview
- SCALA2 is a LiDAR (Light Distance And Ranging) system installed in the Benz Sclass (as of March 2022). It began mass production in 2021 (following SCALA1, which started production in 2017) and supports level 3 autonomous driving.
- SCALA2 features a long detection range of 200 meters and a wide field of view of 133 degrees.
- Compared to SCALA1 (the previous generation), SCALA2 has reduced product depth (6.2mm smaller, measuring 95.5mm), tripled vertical field of view (10.5 degrees), and expanded measurement points fivefold (250k/sec).
- It adopts a scanning method using a rotating mirror.
Product Features (Changes from Previous Generation)
- The enclosure cover for the control module has been removed, and the heat-generating ICs on the control board now make direct contact with the product enclosure, using thermal grease for heat dissipation. This change is related to reducing the product depth.
- The laser diode driver now uses “GaN FET” (instead of the previous generation’s “Bipolar Transistor”).
- The light-receiving sensor has been expanded to 16 channels (compared to 3 channels in the previous generation), and the measurement point count has also increased to 250k per second.
- The sensor module now consists of two boards: one for illumination and one for reception (compared to the previous three-board configuration with separate illumination, reception, and power boards).
- The number of discrete components on the reception board (previously used for LNA) has decreased, and additional power elements have been integrated. The functionality of the previous power board has been distributed between the reception board and the control board, resulting in a two-board configuration for the sensor module. The size of the reception board remains largely unchanged from the previous generation.
- The memory size has been expanded: DRAM is now twice as large, and Flash memory is four times larger.
Most other major components (such as SoC, PMIC, DCDC, Transceiver IC, Temp. Sensor, etc.) have also been updated.
