Leads a new vehicle audio architecture

This solution is based on the new automotive EE architecture – zonal architecture. It integrates audio amplifiers into Zonal Control Unit (ZCU). Transmits Audio Data with vehicle Ethernet backbone instead of dedicated A2B bus, which could help to decrease the cost of audio part. The speakers in the car could be connected to a closest ZCU with much shorter wiring harness, which could reduce the vehicle weight and simplify the assembly. Dedicated External Audio AMP module is no more needed with this solution. Distributed audio amplifiers help the thermal management become easier while more and more speakers are integrated into a car.

Thanks to SR6Gx automotive MCU from STMicroelectronics. We could implement this new audio architecture without any extra BOM. Internal hardware modules and Ethernet TSN stacks help recover audio transmitted over Ethernet and ensure the audio synchronization between different ZCUs. It helps to implement audio over Ethernet solution with lower cost and better performance.

Demo car has been created to show this solution in a more intuitive way. This demo car has two ZCUs with 4 audio channels each. It can play the audio transmitted over Ethernet and keeps the audio synchronized between different ZCUs. Many OEMs are interested in this solution and some of them are cooperating with us for some further study about this solution.