The modern automotive cockpit has evolved from a traditional mechanical operation console to a diverse range, with many digital monitor displays through GPS radars and a plethora of wireless communications. This new and expanding level of electronics provides tremendous benefits to passenger entertainment and driver safety, yet it introduces chaos into the automobile's internal environment due to the electromagnetic interference produced by these devices throughout the vehicle between signal transmissions associated with high voltage propulsion systems currently used in electric vehicles and other civilian 5G and satellite communications systems in addition to vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, and vehicle-to-device communications systems. This electrical disturbance creates a delicate internal environment for the new vehicles, one that requires specialized glass technology designed to provide protection against signal disruptions to the data being transmitted and maintain the required line of sight for the driver.

To minimize the opportunity for signal disruption, engineering teams are using a specialized class of optical components to create ITO EMI/EMC/RFI shielding glass for Vehicles. The combination of high transmission and high attenuation for electrical interference enables the glass manufacturer to produce glass for the automotive designer that thoroughly eliminates cross-talk signals. By using vacuum deposition processes to apply micro thin layers of indium tin oxide directly to tempered glass substrates, the glass manufacturer is creating opportunities for the automotive designer to eliminate cross-talk signals between electrical devices in the automotive cockpit.

Protecting Digital Instrumentation in a Mission-Critical Environment

The highest rate of technology advancement falls under this type of display array used to provide humans with real-time feedback from their operation (HMI or Human Machine Interfaces). The most common example of a modern vehicle dashboard is the combination of digital instrument clusters that have grown to encompass enormous volumes of data; central touch screens to control vehicle features, and multiple viewing modalities until recently unique to aircraft (i.e. head-up displays). If high-tech screens are not protected against electromagnetic interference, they will create open electromagnetic wave paths directly between these units and the unchecked and invisible electromagnetic disturbances created by other electronic systems on and surrounding vehicles that will interfere with the operation of adjacent radar systems and sensitive engine control units (ECUs).

Vehicle shielding glass integrated into the display stack provides an integrated shielding solution that creates a transparent Faraday Cage (a surface acting as an electromagnetic shielding). The Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) surface provides good grounding of stray electromagnetic waves, yet it also provides optical clarity of over 85% for maximum brightness for digital instrument clusters to remain visible in direct sunlight, while at the same time isolating the processors behind the digital instrument clusters from external electrical noise.

Vehicle Electronics: Protecting Electronics from EMI/EMC/RFI 

Tactical transport vehicles, communication trucks and military command shelters have much greater challenges than regular vehicles. Their mission is to operate in environments where radio frequency jamming is common; both quality systems that can compromise a communications link are always a possibility.

If one communications link becomes compromised, this could cause your entire command vehicle to become blind (i.e., not be able to identify the location of other command vehicles) and/or provide its location to other units that have access to the command vehicle's location.

To accomplish this, manufactured specialized windows have been created to support heavy-duty applications with ITO EMI/EMC/RFI shielded glass or "vehicle" properties. The ruggedized version of these windows may also have dual conductive coating (CDC), which can drop the surface resistance to just a few ohms per square. By having these levels of attenuation, it prevents data from being obtained through electromagnetic emissions thereby assuring communication and control systems (e.g., tracking systems, tactical computers, and radios) are working when the situation is most critical to the success of a mobile command.

Building Glass for All Weather Safety 

Heavy duty trucks, autonomous freight fleets, and emergency vehicle transport require structural glass to do more than simply provide signal isolation. In order to detect obstacles ahead on an open or not-so-open road, the windshield-mounted sensors, cameras, and LIDAR units need to have uninterrupted line-of-sight, thus creating the need for multiple layers of anti-glare (AG), anti-reflective (AR) treatments, and integrated micro-heating elements with the core electromagnetic interference (EMI) film.

Thus enhanced -- will allow high-frequency electronic signals to not interfere with making the Sensor of an Autonomous Vehicle work properly, and also prevent external radar signals from interfering with internal vehicle telemetry, and will assure the Vehicle shielding glass window remains ice and fog free during winter weather. As global automotive development continues its push towards full Autonomous Vehicles, these Vehicle shielding glass window components are becoming one of the fundamental building blocks of Autonomous Vehicle development.