ON Semiconductor integrates Quuppa’s locating tech in BLE SoC

Quuppa Intelligent Locating System is integrated in ON Semiconductor’s RSL10, flash-based Bluetooth Low Energy radio SoC. The Intelligent Locating System is in a user-friendly CMSIS-Pack format, to allow manufacturers to design low power indoor asset tracking applications with direction finding features and advanced angle of arrival (AoA) technology.

The Quuppa Intelligent Locating System is a technology platform for location-based services and applications. Its direction finding methodology and positioning algorithms enable real time tracking of tags and devices, with centimetre level accuracy even in challenging environments, says ON Semiconductor. The technology allows positioning updates to be sent up to 50 times per second, providing a reliable and versatile real-time locating system (RTLS) for all industries.

The RSL10 Quuppa RTLS AoA Tag CMSIS-Pack is part of an asset management development ecosystem from ON Semiconductor and technology partners. The ecosystem is designed to provide manufacturers with flexible deployment options, and features a range of RSL10-based options, including sensor development kits and software resources.

For turnkey solutions, ON Semiconductor has collaborated with Swiss RFID, Bluetooth Low energy, NFC and IoT engineering company, Tatwah, to develop a portfolio of Bluetooth tags and beacons including Quuppa Trackable Tags.

Monitoring and tracking of assets enables new capabilities and huge improvements in operational efficiencies across a wide variety of applications, explained Wiren Perera, head of IoT at ON Semiconductor. Low power wireless sensing and accurate location identification are essential to deliver these new capabilities and realise market potential, he added.

“We are thrilled to work alongside ON Semiconductor in creating a solution for monitoring and tracking assets across vertical markets. Over the years, we witnessed increasing demand for RTLS technologies where companies are seeking to gain visibility within their production lines and workflows,” said Fabio Belloni, Chief Customer Officer, Quuppa. “The need for a variety of different types of sensors and tags to empower those use cases is endless”.

The RSL10 Quuppa AoA RTLS Tag CMSIS Pack featuring the Quuppa Intelligent Locating System is compatible with all RSL10-based development hardware and is available now for free download.

http://www.onsemi.com

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Tri-band chipset opens access to 6GHz spectrum, says NXP

The CW64 Wi-Fi 6E tri-band SoC from NXP is designed for access points and service provider gateways and enables end network devices to take full advantage of the 6GHz spectrum. The 6GHz band increases capacity in wireless networking and expands spectrum available for Wi-Fi by up to 1.2GHz.   

This is the first Wi-Fi 6E Tri-Band SoC from NXP to support the 6GHz band to provide greater capacity in wireless networking, as congestion increases in the legacy 2.4 and 5GHz bands. It supports 160MHz channel bandwidth with PHY rates of 4.8Gbits per second and over 4Gbits per second of real-world throughput

The 4×4 Wi-Fi device has four spatial streams and 160/80/40/20MHz channel bandwidth, with uplink and downlink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and uplink and downlink Multi-user, multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO) technology.

The CW641 is the first of six planned devices in the series. It enables increased speeds of over 4Gbps and multi-user performance in the new 6GHz band, providing greater capacity and lower latency. Adding 6GHz capabilities to gateway platforms gives service providers options to efficiently partition available bandwidth across devices to ensure optimum user experience for a wide range of applications. Mission-critical, high bandwidth, low latency applications like mesh back haul and cloud gaming are likely to migrate to 6GHz, freeing up the congested 5GHz and 2.4 GHz bands.

The Wi-Fi 6E tri-band SoC can also be used in the 6GHz spectrum to boost the performance of in-home mesh networks, streaming high-resolution music and videos, online gaming, video calling, digital downloads and data-heavy web content, explains NXP. In addition, the CW641 SoC can contribute to Wi-Fi 6E applications across consumer, automotive, industrial, and the IoT.

The CW641 Wi-Fi 6E tri-band SoC is sampling now.

NXP claims to have one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of wireless technologies. When combined with the processing power of the EdgeVerse platform, NXP says its portfolio allows customers to advance their most innovative ideas.

NXP Semiconductors aims to enable secure connections for a smarter world. The secure connectivity for embedded applications provider, is driving innovation in the automotive, industrial and IoT, mobile, and communication infrastructure markets. Built on more than 60 years of combined experience and expertise, the company has   employees in more than 30 countries.

http://www.nxp.com

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Web authentication IC to make NFC authentication scalable

Swiss semiconductor company, EM Microelectronic, announces full volume production of em|linq, the NFC tag authentication IC. em|linq offers to brands the possibility to engage with their customers via NFC and to offer advanced product authentication.

NFC tags are a popular support for consumer engagement, turning any smartphone into a portal for accessing brand content. When the NFC tag content is dynamic, the tags also provide enhanced protection against cloning.

Scalability requires robust, cost-effective products but the authentication component adds cost and complexity typical to smartcards, making the return on investment proposition more difficult. In response, em|linq combines powerful cryptographic mechanisms typically reserved to smartcard products with the convenience and affordability of RFID products, says EM Microelectronic.

It is based on proven, open standards, allowing for full degree of freedom in the implementation of the authentication service. The key management and provisioning. critical for the security architecture, can be handled and fully controlled by the company who implements the solution, regardless of its position in the value chain, whether inlay or label manufacturer, integrator, brand or retailer.

Programming the cryptographic keys into the chips is segregated from programming the URL for the authentication service, providing additional flexibility and security for the system implementation.

The IC also opens up integration possibilities for electronic labels. Its small form factor provides superior mechanical robustness, says EM Electronic. Its power efficiency enables small antenna form factor to enhance communication performance. Electrical characteristics are compatible with most of the antenna designs on the market, reducing the engineering effort.

The authentication engine is built on top of a traditional RFID architecture rather than by simplifying a cumbersome smartcard one. Adding the authentication functionality remains an extension of a traditional RFID use case, with no unnecessary overhead. The tags are produced using the same process flow and with the same quality and cost-effectiveness as the standard RFID products. EM Electronic says its RF performance allows for very small inlay constructions, for ease of integration and to reduce the cost.

em|linq is NFC Type-2 compliant. Optimised cryptographic hardware implementation provides best-in-class web authentication brand protection to consumers’ smartphones, claims EM Electronic, using a dynamically generated HMAC-SHA1 code appended to the URL stored in the NDEF container.

http://www.emmicroelectronic.com

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Solid state lidar has range of 150m+, says RoboSense

At CES 2021, RoboSense announced the standard operating procedure (SOP) version of its automotive-grade, MEMS solid-state lidar, RS-LiDAR-M1.

Features include a ranging capability of more than 150m for 10 per cent reflectivity targets and a range of up to 200m for detecting vehicle objects. The average resolution of M1 is 0.2 x 0.2 degrees (horizontally and vertically) with a wide field of view of 120 x 25 degrees  (horizontally and vertically) to create a high resolution of 0.75M pixel points per second.

The RS-LiDAR-M1 has reduced the minimum detection distance to less than 0.5m by upgrading the optical system design and signal processing system. RoboSense has innovated the signal processing algorithms and optical system design, enabling the M1 to distinguish laser emission signals from ambient lights, without interference from strong sunlight.

M1 filters laser pulses from other lidars to prevent crosstalk. The SOP version is claimed to be the world’s thinnest automotive lidar, measuring 108mm in depth, 110mm wide and 45mm high for ease of integration into the vehicle body.

Power consumption is less than 15W. Supporting functions include over-the-air firmware updates, blockage detection, smart cleaning, smart heating, performance detection, power management and network management.

RoboSense has adopted VDA6.3 as the basis of project management and control, implemented IATF16949 quality management system and the ISO26262 standard, and has integrated ISO16750 and other automotive-grade reliability specifications, to carry out a series of verification tests on M1. Tests include random mechanical vibration, mechanical shock, splash water, stone impact, high and low temperature storage and operation, solar radiation, EMC, chemical corrosion and salt spray. The cumulative test time of all M1 test samples has exceeded 300,000 hours, reports the company. The longest-running prototype has been in continuous operation for more than 700 days, and the total road test mileage has exceeded 200,000km.

Founded in 2014, RoboSense provides smart lidar sensor systems, incorporating lidar sensors, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and IC chipsets, that transform conventional 3D lidar sensors to full data analysis and comprehension systems.

http://robosense.ai/

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