Lumotive and Lumentum make available the M30 Reference Design

In order to facilitate the quick adoption of LCM-based solid-state beam steering technology, two big companies in the LiDAR Industry have joined efforts.

Lumotive, the creator of Light Control Metasurface (LCM™) beam steering chips that enable the next generation of 3D sensors, and Lumentum Holdings Inc ("Lumentum"), market-leading designer and manufacturer of innovative optical and photonic products, jointly announced the availability of the M30 Reference Design, a complete software-defined sensor implementation.

Select clients can now evaluate the M30 Reference Design, which combines the M52-100 multi-junction vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) array from Lumentum with the LCM beam steering chip from Lumotive.

In San Francisco from January 28 to February 2nd, Lumotive will exhibit the cutting-edge capabilities of LCM beam steering technology at SPIE Photonics West, the premier conference for optical systems designers.

“Lumentum’s high-performance, multi-junction VCSEL arrays have unique and powerful advantages such as increased energy efficiency and scanning accuracy, critical for all-electronic, 3D LiDAR sensor solutions,” said Rakinder Grover, Vice President of Strategy and Partnerships at Lumotive.

LiDAR sensors based on LCM electrical beam steering have many benefits over conventional flash lighting methods, such as:

• Superior performance at outdoor ranges
• Increased and application-specific performance (range, field of vision, frame rate, and resolution) only where it matters thanks to software-defined scan modes
• fewer multipath effects, which improves the quality of the point cloud
• lighting over the field of view is optimized for a range of reflectivity and high ambient light levels.
• increased protection against interference from other sensors
• High power density in a compact design

“The M30 reference design seamlessly integrates Lumentum’s M52-100 VCSEL array technology with Lumotive’s transformative beam steering chips.

The result is a software-definable, immediately deployable LiDAR sensor solution that addresses both the low power and small footprint requirements of short to long-range mobility and industrial applications.” Grover added.

Several top Tier 1 automotive suppliers, industrial OEMs, and developers of LiDAR systems are now testing early iterations of the M30 Reference Design. By the middle of 2023, the M30 Reference Design with improved performance and volume manufacturing optimization should be ready.

“Combined with Lumentum’s high performance, multi-junction VCSEL technology, the LCM beam steering technology from Lumotive allows customers to implement true solid-state, VCSEL-based LiDAR with software-definable characteristics in a compact package,” said Matt Everett, Senior Director of Product Line Management at Lumentum

He added that “the M30 Reference Design provides outstanding performance and the ability to dynamically adjust the field-of-view (FoV) and region of interest, giving customers the turnkey solution they need to realize their LiDAR vision of the future.”

The solution will be demonstrated during SPIE Photonics West 2023, the premier lasers, biomedical optics, and optoelectronics conference, which will take place in San Francisco.