PWM Frequencies — Feasibility to avoid their negative effects

In recent years, several investigations have addressed Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) frequencies. Most were focused on how to avoid light flickering and, fewer targeted other effects such as stroboscopic or phantom array. These investigations have evolved along with our knowledge of LEDs and the electronics that surround them to create the complete light system. On the other hand, literature written from the car maker perspective is scarce, creating a gap between what is being observed in the experiments and what is feasible or even reasonable to do in real life applications. This investigation aims to bridge that gap, offering a car maker's perspective by organizing and leveraging the different inputs from several papers, in order to then analyse the feasibility to avoid PWM frequencies' negative effects on a real-world engineering context, having in mind the user and its safety, but also the general hardware constraints that can be found during the design of a vehicle's electronic system and the exterior lighting components. Considerations such as LED lifetime, power consumption, HW component selection, price and, finally, human eye and camera detection of negative effects, are the main aspects evaluated, as they are considered of key interest from an OEM perspective.