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nRF7002 companion IC and development kit create low power Wi-Fi 6 IoT

Thu, Feb 02, 2023

The first IC in Nordic Semiconductor’s Wi-Fi product family is the nRF7002 Wi-Fi 6 companion IC. The low power Wi-Fi 6 companion IC provides seamless dual band (2.4 and 5.0GHz) connectivity. The nRF7002 IC can be used with Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52 and nRF53 series multi-protocol SoCs and the nRF9160 cellular IoT (LTE-M / NB-IoT) system in package (SiP), but can be used in conjunction with non-Nordic host devices.

In IoT applications, Wi-Fi 6 has power efficiency gains for battery power Wi-Fi operation and management in smart home products, industrial sensors, asset trackers, and wearables. They also contribute to the management of large IoT networks comprising hundreds of devices, said Nordic Semiconductor.

According to Svein-Egil Nielsen, CTO and executive vice president of R&D and Strategy at Nordic: “This highly integrated and flexible solution will empower developers to create new, innovative Wi-Fi 6-enabled products. Supported with the nRF7002 DK and the award-winning nRF Connect [software development kit], combined with Nordic’s . . . technical support, I believe it has never been easier to develop great Wi-Fi products.”

“The nRF7002 is designed to work alongside Nordic’s nRF52 and nRF53 Series making it a perfect fit for Matter, a smart-home standard backed by Amazon, Apple, Google, Nordic, Samsung, and hundreds of other companies,” explained Finn Boetius, product marketing engineer with Nordic. “The introduction of the IC and the nRF7002 DK now makes it easy for developers to get started on Matter and any other Wi-Fi based applications.” Matter uses Thread and Wi-Fi for data transport, and Bluetooth LE for commissioning.

The nRF7002 brings low power and secure Wi-Fi to the IoT. The dual-band IC complies with Station (STA), Soft Access Point (AP), and Wi-Fi Direct operation, and meets the IEEE 802.11b, a, g, n (Wi-Fi 4), ac (Wi-Fi 5), and ax (Wi-Fi 6) standards. The product also offers co-existence with Bluetooth LE, Thread and Zigbee.

The nRF7002 supports target wake time (TWT) a key Wi-Fi 6 power saving feature. Interfacing with a host processor is done via serial peripheral interface (SPI) or quad SPI (QSPI). The IC offers a single spatial stream, 20MHz channel bandwidth, 64 QAM (MCS7), OFDMA, up to 86Mbits per second PHY throughput, and BSS (base service set) colouring.

In addition to general IoT applications and Matter, the nRF7002 implements low power SSID-based Wi-Fi location when used with Nordic’s nRF9160 SiP and the company’s nRF Cloud Location Services. SSID-based Wi-Fi location supplements GNSS- or cell-based location by providing accurate positioning indoors and in places with a high density of Wi-Fi access points.

The introduction of the nRF7002 is accompanied by the launch of the nRF7002 DK, a development kit for the Wi-Fi 6 companion IC. The DK includes an nRF7002 IC and features an nRF5340 multi-protocol SoC as a host processor for the nRF7002. The nRF5340 embeds a 128MHz Arm Cortex-M33 application processor and a 64MHz high efficiency network processor. The DK supports the development of low-power Wi-Fi applications and enables Wi-Fi 6 features like OFDMA (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing), beamforming, and TWT (target wake time). The DK includes Arduino connectors; two programmable buttons; a Wi-Fi dual-band antenna and a Bluetooth LE antenna, and current measurement pins.

The nRF7002 companion IC and nRF7002 DK are available now from Nordic’s distribution partners.

http://www.nordicsemic.com

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EKF Elektronik pledges long term support for CompactPCI boards

Thu, Feb 02, 2023

Two 3U CompactPCI processor boards, based on 11th generation Intel Core and Xeon processors (codename Tiger Lake H45) will be launched at Embedded World 2023 (14 to 16 March) by EKF Elektronik.

The boards will be available as a CompactPCI Serial design and a version which supports both CompactPCI Classic and CompactPCI PlusI/O. The latter supports the classic parallel PCI bus, for which there are still numerous COTS and proprietary expansion cards available today. Developers of CompactPCI-based systems can implement any CompactPCI system design and secure investment in the PICMG standard, long into the future.

The new boards will be available until at least 2032, confirmed EKF Elektronik. The company supports existing CompactPCI CPU boards with 7th generation Intel Xeon E3 v6 processors (codename Kaby Lake), which the company also offers for all three CompactPCI sub-specifications.

“Support for the PCI bus is essential for older CompactPCI system designs, yet some vendors are withdrawing from this market,” said Manuel Murer, business development manager at EKF Elektronik. He added that developers “can safeguard their investment in this legacy technology for many more years, continue to upgrade their system designs with the latest processor technology, and reap all the benefits that come with it”.

Upgrades bring advantages, including higher energy efficiency, higher processor-integrated security and computing power, up-to-date software support, and above all, said EKF Elektronik, support for AI and the latest graphics features.

As 11th Gen Intel Core and Xeon processors no longer support PCI natively, EKF Elektronik has installed a software-transparent PCIe-to-PCI bridge on the processor boards with CompactPCI Classic and CompactPCI PlusIO support. This allows developers to seamlessly port existing applications to the new boards, explained EKF Elektronik.

There is also a J2 connector on the CompactPCI PlusIO (PICMG 2.30) boards, which is footprint-compatible with the CompactPCI Classic (PICMG 2.0) specification. This change was necessary because the J2 connector specifically developed for PlusIO has been discontinued. There is no need to redesign the backplane, advised EKF Elektronik. The only restriction is that high-speed backplane transfer is limited to 2.5Gtransfers per second for PCIe Gen 1, and 1.5Gbit per second for SATA. Depending on the application and system, it is possible to use the full bandwidth. The CompactPCI‘s PCI bus can be used in the usual bandwidth up to 133Mbyte per second.

The CompactPCI processor boards with 11th Gen Intel Core processors in the CompactPCI Serial (SC9-TOCCATA) variant are expected to be available mid-2023. The PC9-TOCCATA variants for CompactPCI Classic and CompactPCI PlusIO will go into series production later. Until that time, 7th generation PC7-FESTIVAL variants, which can be ordered now, provide a reliable long-term solution to existing availability problems for cPCI and PlusIO applications.

Visit EKF Elektronik at Embedded World 2023, Hall 1 – 406

http://www.ekf.de

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16Gbyte SoM with edge AI can be used in handheld devices, says Nvidia

Wed, Feb 01, 2023

The Jetson Orin NX 16Gbyte module is now available for purchase from Nvidia. The system on module (SoM) has a small form factor, making it suitable for low power robots, embedded applications and autonomous machines. It can be used in products like drones and handheld devices, advised Nvidia.

Target applications are in manufacturing, logistics, retail, agriculture, healthcare, and life sciences.

The Jetson Orin NX is the smallest Jetson form factor, delivering up to 100 TOPS of AI performance with power configurable between 10 and 25W. It gives developers three times the performance of the Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier and five times the performance of the Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX.

The SoM supports multiple AI application pipelines with Nvidia Ampere architecture GPU, next-generation deep learning and vision accelerators, high-speed I/O and fast memory bandwidth. It can be used for developing systems with large and complex AI models in natural language understanding, 3D perception and multi-sensor fusion.

To showcase the leap in performance achievable by the SoM, Nvidia ran some computer vision benchmarks using the Nvidia JetPack 5.1. Testing included some dense INT8 and FP16 pre-trained models from NGC, Nvidia’s portal of enterprise services, software, management tools, and support for end-to-end AI and digital twin workflows. The same models were also run for comparison on Jetson Xavier NX.

The benchmarks for people detection, licence plate recognition, object detection and labelling and multi-person human pose estimation showed that the Jetson Orin NX delivered a 2.1 times performance increase compared to Jetson Xavier NX. With future software optimisations, this is expected to approach 3.1 times for dense benchmarks. Other Jetson devices have increased performance by 1.5 times since the first supporting software release. Similar results are anticipated for the Jetson Orin NX 16Gbyte.

Jetson Orin NX also brings support for sparsity, which will enable even greater

performance. With sparsity, developers can take advantage of the fine-grained structured sparsity in deep learning networks to increase the throughput for Tensor Core operations.

All Jetson Orin modules run the world-standard Nvidia AI software stack.

Nvidia JetPack 5.1 supports the Orin NX 16Gbyte and the latest CUDA-X stack on Jetson Orin.

The Jetson partner ecosystem supports a broad range of carrier boards and peripherals for the Jetson Orin NX 16Gbyte module, such as sensors, cameras,

connectivity modules (5G, 4G, Wi-Fi).

http://www.nvidia.com

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imec combines VIS and NIR for hyperspectral camera system

Mon, Jan 30, 2023

At SPIE Photonics West, imec showcased what it claims is the first multi-sensor hyperspectral camera system that covers both the visual and red / near infrared spectral ranges, and has a high resolution RGB sensor.

Even in scenarios with inherent motion, the system supports data acquisition at video rate, said Imec and helps assess which spectral resolution and range best suit a given application using a single device.

Companies are investigating how hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology can enhance product and / or service offerings, which can require testing several camera options. A challenge is to fuse the data from the various camera options into one dataset to analyse and draw conclusions.

Imec offers a series of hyperspectral snapshot cameras, each covering a specific spectral resolution and range – from the visual (VIS), over near-infrared (NIR), to short wave infrared (SWIR) ranges. All support real time data acquisition, even in motion, said Wouter Charle, program manager of imec’s spectral imaging on-chip activities.

The latest addition to the portfolio is the multi-shot VNIR+RGB – a multi-sensor system that covers the VIS to NIR spectral range, complemented with a high-resolution RGB sensor. The multi-sensor system is intended for companies and research groups engaging in HSI application development.

The hyperspectral camera comes with three sensors, integrated into a single housing, and equipped with a standard F-mount lens. It will allow partners to assess the pros and cons of different spectral resolutions and ranges without needing to invest in a myriad of devices or duplicate experiments, advised Imec.

Inside the camera, the light is directed to three channels. Two of them are equipped with an Imec off the shelf 2Mpixel sensor, covering the VIS and NIR spectral ranges. A third channel sports a high resolution RGB sensor. The camera system covers 30 bands in the 460 to 870nm range, complemented by a true colour, 5Mpixel image. These components work in sync at video rate speed for real time data acquisition (even of dynamic scenes).

It can help companies decide which sensor best suits their needs, said Imec. The system is flexible and is supplied with software.

According to Imec, the hyperspectral camera systems can support an uncontrollably dynamic scene, such as assisted surgery, environmental monitoring, anomaly detection, automotive vision, precision agriculture and crop inspection.

Imec is a research and innovation centre in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. It leverages its R&D in advanced semiconductor and system scaling, silicon photonics, artificial intelligence, beyond 5G communications and sensing technologies, and in application domains such as health and life sciences, mobility, industry 4.0, agrofood, smart cities, sustainable energy and education.

Imec is headquartered in Leuven (Belgium), and has research sites across Belgium, in the Netherlands and the USA, and offices in China, India, Taiwan and Japan.

http://www.imec-int.com

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nRF7002 companion IC and development kit create low power Wi-Fi 6 IoT

EKF Elektronik pledges long term support for CompactPCI boards

16Gbyte SoM with edge AI can be used in handheld devices, says Nvidia

imec combines VIS and NIR for hyperspectral camera system

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