With the emergence of new trends in automotive electronics such as autonomous driving, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), advanced car infotainment systems, system designers are facing new challenges, particularly in designing automotive front-end power systems. With rise in Electronic Control Unit (ECU) processing power typically ranging from 100 W–1000 W, traditional reverse polarity protection solutions such as Schottky diodes and P-FETs no longer become a viable solution at these system power levels due to poor efficiency, need of thermal management, and an increase in PCB space. Keeping system level safety in mind ,redundancy requirements especially in autonomous driving are pushing need for newer system architectures like input supply ORing and power MUXing in dual battery-based systems. Robust protection requirements during stringent automotive Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) testing adds another layer of complexity while designing these front-end power systems.

This application note highlights how the new LM749x0-Q1 dual gate drive ideal diode controller with integrated overvoltage and overcurrent protection enables various front-end protection circuit design architectures based on system requirements.