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Infineon expands its Bluetooth portfolio with eight new parts

Wed, Aug 14, 2024

Infineon has announced the expansion of its Bluetooth portfolio by eight new products in the AIROC CYW20829 Bluetooth Low Energy 5.4 microcontroller (MCU) family, featuring Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) and modules optimised for industrial, consumer, and automotive use cases. The high integration of the CYW20829 product family allows designers to reduce bill-of-material (BOM) cost and device footprint in a wide variety of applications, including PC accessories, low-energy audio, wearables, solar micro inverters, asset trackers, health and lifestyle, home automation and others. Product designers also benefit from Infineon’s development infrastructure and commitment to robust security, with support for secure boot and execution environments and cryptography acceleration to safeguard sensitive data.

The latest automotive part in the product family, the AIROC CYW89829 Bluetooth Low-Energy MCU, is ideal for car access and wireless battery management systems (wBMS) applications, due to its robust RF performance, long range and latest Bluetooth 5.4 features including PAwR (Periodic Advertising with Responses). The dual ARM Cortex core design of the chip family features separate application and Bluetooth Low Energy subsystems that deliver full featured support for Bluetooth 5.4, low-power, 10 dBm output power without a PA, integrated flash, CAN FD, crypto accelerators, high security including Root of Trust (RoT), and is PSA level 1 ready.

https://www.infineon.com

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20A models added to 1/16th brick footprint DC-DC buck converter series from TDK

Tue, Aug 13, 2024

TDK has announced an expansion to the TDK-Lambda i7A series of non-isolated buck (step-down) DC-DC converters with the industry-standard 1/16th brick pinout. 20A output models with a 500W maximum rating are now available, offering a trimmable 3.3 – 32V* output capability and operation from 28V up to 60V input. An adjustable over-current limit is also available as an option, reducing stress on the converter or load when exposed to excessive overcurrent conditions and facilitating fine-tuning based on actual system requirements.

The 20A i7A models can be used to derive additional high-power outputs at a lower cost and higher efficiency than isolated DC-DC converters. These very compact products are suited for use in mobile robotics, drones, medical, industrial, test and measurement, communications, computing, and portable battery-powered equipment.

Efficiencies of up to 96% dramatically minimise internal losses and allow the 20A i7A models to operate in ambient temperatures of -40°C up to +125°C, even with low airflow conditions. The i7A’s design provides low output ripple and excellent response to dynamic loads. Minimal external components are required, compared to discrete solutions, saving cost and printed circuit board space.

Like the i7A 33A, 45A and 60A versions, the 20A offers a choice of three mechanical configurations, measuring just 34mm wide and 36.8mm in length. The 11.5mm high open-frame model is suitable for applications requiring a low profile and weighs just 25g. The baseplate version can be conduction-cooled to a cold plate and is 12.7mm high. Models with an integral heatsink, which are for convection or forced air cooling, are 24.9mm high.

The i7A standard features include output voltage adjustment, positive remote sense, negative logic remote on-off, input under-voltage, over-current and over-temperature protection. Evaluation boards are available for simplified qualification.

All models have safety certification to the IEC/UL/CSA/EN 62368-1 standards, with CE and UKCA marking to the Low Voltage and RoHS Directives.

https://product.tdk.com

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ROHM develops the industry’s smallest CMOS Op Amp for smartphones and IoT devices

Fri, Aug 02, 2024

ROHM has developed an ultra-compact 1.8V – 5V, rail-to-rail CMOS operational amplifier (op amp) – the TLR377GYZ. It is optimised for amplifying signals from sensors such as temperature, pressure, flow rate, used in smartphones, small IoT devices, and similar applications.

The size of smartphones and IoT devices continues to decrease – requiring smaller components. To accurately amplify small signals as needed in high precision sensing, op amps must improve low input offset voltage and noise performance while continuing to shrink the form factor.

The TLR377GYZ succeeds in balancing miniaturisation with high accuracy (which has been difficult to achieve with conventional op amps) by further evolving proprietary circuit design, process, and packaging technologies cultivated over many years.

Op amps’ input offset voltage and noise generation degrade amplification accuracy and can be suppressed by increasing the size of the built-in transistors – but at the expense of miniaturisation. In response, ROHM developed proprietary circuits which achieve a maximum offset voltage as low as 1mV without increasing the size of the transistors. In addition, proprietary process technology greatly reduces flicker noise, while ultra-low noise is achieved with an input equivalent noise voltage density of 12nV/√Hz by optimising the resistive components at the element level. Furthermore, the new product adopts a WLCSP (Wafer Level Chip Scale Package) with a ball pitch of just 0.3mm utilising original packaging technology. This reduces size by approximately 69% compared to conventional products and 46% over existing compact products.

https://www.rohm.com/

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Sondrel’s SFA 100 is ideal for AI at the Edge

Thu, Aug 01, 2024

Sondrel has optimised its SFA 100 to make it ideal for battery-powered, AI at the Edge applications. The SFA 100 is one of the five architectural platforms in the company’s Architecting the Future chip design platform which provides a ready-made design baseline that the company uses to build a bespoke solution for every customer.

The SFA 100 uses an Arm subsystem with a choice of Arm cores and the option of a security subsystem. Its low power requirement makes it the ideal platform for battery-powered edge AI applications such as smart home, smart factory, and sensor fusion devices. The device provides the ability to integrate a machine-learning engine supporting a variety of inference based ‘smarts’ such as voice activation, image classification, gesture recognition, filtering, etc. A radio subsystem such as a Bluetooth IP block or WiFi can also be added if required. Customer’s IP and any third-party IP can be included as Sondrel has the ability to wrap IP blocks so that they have all the necessary interfaces to just drop onto the chassis. More powerful solutions can be created by using the SFA 200 or SFA 300 as starting points.

The Edge AI market is predicted to expand at a CAGR of 33.5% to reach $76 billion by 2031 according to a report by Transparency Market Research. The key is the drive to process data locally and thus eliminate the latency from transmitting the data to a centralised cloud server for processing. Applications range from industry 4.0, where it is used to provide real-time decision making, to devices such as drones, smartphones, cars, etc.

https://www.sondrel.com/

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