ICs & Semiconductors Archives - Page 107 of 235

Fast charging ICs offer highest charging efficiencies, says Halo Microelectronics

Tue, Apr 26, 2022

Two fast charging ICs released by Halo Microelectronics use a dual-phase switched capacitor architecture for single cell battery applications.

The HL7138 and HL7139, fast charging ICs are claimed to offer the industry’s highest charging efficiencies, which enable faster and cooler battery charging operations in a PCB solution size that is up to 30 per cent smaller than the nearest competitor. The small form factor allows for more system level design flexibility, added Halo Microelectronics.

In addition to saving consumers time by fast charging, the ICs deliver cooler charging which means less energy is wasted, making the charging process environmentally friendly. The small size also provides designers more leeway to choose between thinner and lighter form factors or larger batteries for longer battery life, and whether to include more features or lower bill of material (BoM) costs.

Fast charging is one of the features which can differentiate a smartphone design in a saturated market. It is also one that consumers can relate to and understand the benefits, commented David Nam, CEO of Halo Microelectronics. “Halo Microelectronics has seen switched capacitor-based fast-charging architectures quickly extend from high-end to mid-level smartphones,” he said.

Halo Microelectronics develops analogue and power management ICs (PMICs) enabling energy-efficient smart systems. Its customers develop mobile, IoT and automotive systems.

https://halomicro.com

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IoT LED streetlight controller shines a light on smart cities

Fri, Apr 22, 2022

Infrastructure specialist, Urban Control has partnered with Nordic Semiconductor to produce an IoT LED streetlight luminaire controller that can be networked for control by any central management system (CMS) based on the TALQ standard, the smart city standard developed by the TALQ Consortium.

Set for initial deployment in April 2022, each Urban Node 324 Cellular city streetlight LED luminaire controller includes a Nordic Semiconductor nRF9160 multi-mode NB-IoT / LTE-M system-in-package (SiP). The controller plugs into an industry-standard Zhaga LED lighting socket. The controller is connected over the local cellular IoT network and remotely controlled by any smart city CMS.

The operational simplicity of each Urban Node 324 comes from them being engineered to work via a lightweight machine to machine (LwM2M) platform called Alaska from IoTerop. The platform leverages the two most common smart city IoT standards: uCIFI and TALQ and uses embedded design engineering to minimise on-air bandwidth and reduce power consumption to levels sufficient to support battery-powered smart city sensors and devices.

The use of standard cellular technology means that Urban Node 324 Cellular can be deployed immediately and is cost-effective for small and distributed lighting estates. It can be used to deliver intelligent control to streetlights in retail parks, hotel chains, office and warehouse developments, and across rail infrastructure such as stations, car parks and good yards.

Urban Control Urban Node 324 Cellular controllers allow the user the ability to precisely control brightness and therefore energy consumption and costs. It has the ability to dynamically respond to sudden changes in pedestrian numbers or road traffic, to monitor energy consumption in real-time and identify and even pre-empt faults to efficiently co-ordinate maintenance staff to reduce operating costs.

Intelligent, centrally controlled streetlights offer many benefits. Light output can be adapted to precisely what is needed, and they can respond dynamically to changes in pedestrian footfall or road traffic. In doing so, they reduce energy costs, carbon emissions and light pollution.

“Unlike traditional smart city lighting installations that require a specialised network to be built, the Urban Node 324 Cellular works straight out-of-the-box just like a smartphone,” says Miguel Lira, Urban Control’s innovation and development director. “This makes it commercially and technologically viable for any size installation because it does not require the operator to build their own wireless IoT network or become a wireless IoT network operator themselves.” The system is scalable with the capability to be used for small clusters of streetlights all the way up to massive, multi-million node capital city-sized installations, he says. “This is truly a game changer in the smart city streetlighting industry.”

Lorenzo Amicucci, business development manager at Nordic Semiconductor, agrees. “Moving away from proprietary solutions towards devices which are ready straight out of the box and leverage cellular networks that are already deployed in every town, city and significant population centre around the world, devices like Urban Node 324 can make anywhere smart more quickly and for less cost.”

https://www.nordicsemi.com

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Common source dual GaN FET is AEC-qualified for lidar systems

Thu, Apr 21, 2022

The latest addition to Efficient Power Conversion (EPC)’s family of automotive qualified transistors and ICs is small enough for time-of-flight (ToF) lidar applications including robotics, drones, 3D sensing and autonomous cars.

The EPC2221 is a common source dual GaN FET rated at 100V, 58 mOhm and 20A pulsed current. The FET can be also be used in surveillance systems and vacuum cleaners.

The low inductance and capacitance of the EPC2221 allows fast switching (100MHz) and narrow pulse widths (two nanoseconds) for high resolution and high efficiency. Additionally, the small size (1.35 x 1.35mm) reduces PCB cost and total solution size, says EPC.

This latest member of EPC’s family of GaN transistors and ICs designed to meet the performance and reliability standards of demanding automotive applications has completed AEC Q101 qualification testing including humidity testing with bias (H3TRB), high temperature reverse bias (HTRB), high temperature gate bias (HTGB), and temperature cycling (TC).

In addition to lidar in automotive applications, the EPC2221 is suited to high-frequency DC/DC conversion, wireless power applications and synchronous rectification.

Alex Lidow, CEO and co-founder of EPC, believes this IC “improves the performance while reducing size and cost for time-of-flight lidar systems.”

The EPC2221 is available for immediate delivery from Digi-Key Electronics.

Designers interested in replacing silicon MOSFETs with a GaN device can use the EPC GaN Power Bench’s cross reference tool to find a suggested replacement based on operating conditions.

EPC specialises in enhancement mode GaN-based power management. The company says eGaN FETs and ICs provide performance many times greater than the best silicon power MOSFETs in applications such as DC/DC converters, remote sensing technology (lidar), motor drives for eMobility, robotics, and drones and low-cost satellites

EPC will be at PCIM Europe (10–12 May 2022) Hall 9 – Stand 113

http://www.epc-co.com

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Clock buffers and multiplexers meet PCIe Gen6 specifications

Tue, Apr 19, 2022

Believed to be the first clock buffers and multiplexers on the market to meet stringent PCIe Gen6 specifications, the RC190xx clock buffers and RC192xx multiplexers have been released by Renesas.

The release comprises 11 clock buffers and four multiplexers. The devices, which also support and provide extra margin for PCIe Gen5 implementations, complement Renesas’ low-jitter 9SQ440, 9FGV1002 and 9FGV1006 clock generators for PCIe Gen6 timing for data centre / cloud computing, networking and high-speed industrial applications.

The PCIe Gen6 standard supports extremely high data rates of 64Gtransfers per second while requiring very low clock jitter performance of less than 100fs RMS. The RC190xx clock buffers and RC192xx multiplexers have PCIe Gen6 additive jitter specs of only 4fs RMS, making them virtually noiseless, says Renesas. The company claims this means they future-proof designs for the next generation of industry standards.

“PCIe Gen6 timing will be at the heart of new equipment in data centers, high-speed networking and other applications,” said Zaher Baidas, vice president of the Timing Products division at Renesas.

“It will be interesting to see the innovative implementations that result from this new capability, especially when considering how solutions for the emerging Chiplet market are starting to evolve, with the need for increasing speed and bandwidth as an underlying constant,” comments Rich Wawrzyniak, principal analyst for Semico Research.

The PCIe Gen6 clock buffers and multiplexers offer 1.4ns in-out delay, 35ps out-out skew and -80dB PSRR (power supply rejection ratio) at 100kHz in addition to low 4fs PCIe Gen6 additive jitter.

Selectable SMBus addresses facilitate the use of multiple devices while SMBus write-protect feature enhances system security.

The devices represent 30 per cent space-saving compared to earlier devices, adds Renesas.

Other features are loss-of-signal (LOS) output supports system monitoring and redundancy, a four-wire side-band interface to support high speed serial output enable / disable and device daisy-chaining. In addition, power down tolerant (PDT) and flexible start-up sequencing (FSS) features ensure good behaviour under abnormal system conditions, the company claims.

The RC190xx buffers are offered in 4-, 8-, 13-, 16-, 20- and 24-output configurations. The RC192xx multiplexers include 2-, 4-, 8- and 16-output versions. They are offered in packages as small as 3.0 x 3.0mm.

All of the new devices are available now, and Renesas also offers an evaluation board schematic.

http://www.renesas.com

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Fast charging ICs offer highest charging efficiencies, says Halo Microelectronics

IoT LED streetlight controller shines a light on smart cities

Common source dual GaN FET is AEC-qualified for lidar systems

Clock buffers and multiplexers meet PCIe Gen6 specifications

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