The GMSL2™ and GMSL3™ product families support forward-channel (video path) data rates of 3 Gbps, 6 Gbps, and 12 Gbps, covering a wide range of robotic vision use cases. These flexible link rates allow system designers to optimize for resolution, frame rate, sensor type, and processing requirements (Figure 2).
A 3 Gbps link is typically enough for surround-view cameras using 2–3 MP rolling shutter sensors at 60 FPS, and it also supports common sensing needs like ToF, LiDAR point-cloud data, and radar outputs.
The 6 Gbps mode is used for higher-resolution forward-facing cameras (8 MP and above) that handle tasks like object detection and scene understanding, and it provides the bandwidth needed for raw ToF data or high-frame-rate stereo vision systems.
At the high end, 12 Gbps links support 12 MP and higher-resolution cameras for advanced robotics applications that require detailed classification, segmentation, or long-range perception. Even some lower-resolution global-shutter sensors benefit from this speed to reduce readout time and prevent motion artifacts during fast capture, which is critical in dynamic or high-speed environments.
GMSL uses frequency-domain duplexing to separate the forward (video and control) and reverse (control) channels, it enables bidirectional communication with low and deterministic latency, without the risk of data collisions.
Across all link rates, GMSL maintains impressively low latency: the added delay from the input of a GMSL serializer to the output of a deserializer typically falls in the lower tens of microseconds—negligible for most real-time robotic vision systems. The deterministic reverse-channel latency enables precise hardware triggering from the host to the camera—critical for synchronized image capture across multiple sensors, as well as for time-sensitive, event-driven frame triggering in complex robotic workflows.
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