Melexis, the Belgian auto IC specialist, is sampling an AEC-Q100 qualified QVGA time-of-flight sensor – the MLX75026.

The chip offers software-compatibility with the MLX75027 Gen 3 VGA ToF sensor, facilitating migration between VGA and QVGA resolutions.

The new sensor is also half the size and requires only 30% of the computing power needed by the MLX75027 VGA ToF sensor.

The device is suitable  for automotive use cases like driver monitoring systems (DMS), hand movement and robust gesture recognition (HMI) and for in-cabin monitoring systems (IMS).

It delivers intrinsic robustness with respect to scenes with low contrast and strong sunlight, which are usually a severe challenge for conventional 2D image sensors.

This makes the MLX75026 ideal for applications where reliability and availability of data is important. The device is also targeting other markets and applications for which QVGA resolution is adequate, including robust people counting and object/obstacle detection.

MLX75026 has QVGA (320×240 pixels) resolution with a 1/4 inch optical format and supports both 850 nm and 940 nm illumination.

The IC is configurable over an I2C interface and provides CSI-2 serial data output.