Root Cause Analysis of High Speed Automotive SerDes Failures Through Bench Characterization
Root Cause Analysis of High Speed Automotive SerDes Failures Through Bench Characterization
Tuesday, October 6, 2026: 1:30 PM
Summary:
Automotive highspeed serializer and deserializer (SerDes) components play a foundational role in advanced driver assistance (ADAS) and in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems, where reliable data transmission must be maintained across harsh electrical and environmental conditions. Despite robust design margins, field returns and infant-mortality failures continue to expose multiple degradation pathways that adversely affect link functionality, leading to lock loss, data integrity issues, or complete serialization/deserialization failure. This paper presents a collection of case studies highlighting representative failure modes in GMSL SerDes, wherein each electrical anomalies were successfully reproduced and failing circuits were isolated through bench level characterization. By combining conventional fault isolation methodologies—photon emission microscopy (PEM), OBIRCH, and targeted physical analysis —the root causes of these failures were systematically identified.
Automotive highspeed serializer and deserializer (SerDes) components play a foundational role in advanced driver assistance (ADAS) and in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems, where reliable data transmission must be maintained across harsh electrical and environmental conditions. Despite robust design margins, field returns and infant-mortality failures continue to expose multiple degradation pathways that adversely affect link functionality, leading to lock loss, data integrity issues, or complete serialization/deserialization failure. This paper presents a collection of case studies highlighting representative failure modes in GMSL SerDes, wherein each electrical anomalies were successfully reproduced and failing circuits were isolated through bench level characterization. By combining conventional fault isolation methodologies—photon emission microscopy (PEM), OBIRCH, and targeted physical analysis —the root causes of these failures were systematically identified.