ICs & Semiconductors Archives - Page 175 of 231

PMICs halve current to boost efficiency, says Silicon Labs

Wed, May 06, 2020

Energy-friendly power management ICs (PMICs) from Silicon Labs, the EFP01 family are companion chips for EFR32 wireless devices and EFM32 microcontrollers. They enable developers to choose the optimal battery type and chemistries for their applications. Target applications include IoT sensors, asset tags, smart meters, home and building automation, security, and health and wellness products. The PMICs also enable developers to control a product’s power supply over multiple output rails and voltages.

Developers often use PMICs to meet the low-power requirements of IoT designs, but choosing the right one can be challenging. The EFP01 PMICs “provide a turnkey power management companion solution for our wireless SoC and MCU families, combined with Simplicity Studio tools, reference designs, sample applications and ‘PMIC-aware’ wireless stacks for easy development,” said Matt Saunders, vice president of IoT marketing and applications at Silicon Labs.

“If you want the easiest to configure, lowest power wireless solution, Silicon Labs’ EFP01 PMIC with Wireless Gecko is the best choice,” he continued. “The EFP01 is optimised for our IoT connectivity platforms, eliminating the need to incorporate multiple vendor reference designs into a schematic or layout.”

EFP01 PMICs include low-voltage DC/DC converters and regulators and a flexible mechanism to manage the power rails in a system design.

The EFP01 PMIC family features include flexible I/O voltage, a wide input voltage range (0.8 to 5.5V) to support an array of batteries. They also have wide output voltages to support a variety of peripherals, microcontrollers and radios.

The PMICs enable buck and boost voltage conversion as well as combined boost and buck (boost bootstrap) supporting low-voltage, high-current rails for IoT products requiring coin cell batteries and higher transmit power (up to +20 dBm).

They also feature multiple output power rails which allows an IoT product to be powered by one low-cost PMIC. This uses less board real estate and simplifies software/hardware design, says Silicon Labs.

The EFP01 offers quiescent current as low as 150 nA to reduce sleep current and enhance battery life. It also supports coulomb counting which offers vital information for battery life estimation and preventive maintenance.

Samples and production quantities of EFP01 PMICs in a 3.0 x 3.0mm QFN20 package are available now. Silicon Labs also provides three development boards – the SLWRB4179B radio board and two PMIC evaluation boards. Simplicity Studio offers energy profiler and network analyser tools, wireless stacks and reference designs. It is available free of charge.

http://www.silabs.com

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High power speaker amp ICs are optimised for autonomous driving

Thu, Apr 23, 2020

AEC-Q100-qualified 2.8W output Class AB monaural speaker amplifiers from Rohm Semiconductor are intended for instrumental clusters in vehicles equipped with autonomous driving and advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS).

The BD783xxEFJ-M series (BD78306EFJ-M, BD78310EFJ-M and BD78326EFJ-M)
have been developed for vehicle clusters where various sound outputs at high volume, including warning sounds, turn signals, welcome tones and voice guidance are required. They use a new type of over-current protection (OCP) circuit to protect against output shorts to deliver high 2.8W output, which was difficult to achieve in the past, reports Rohm. In addition to over-current protection, built-in thermal shutdown and under-voltage lock out (UVLO) ensure high reliability protection against abnormal conditions.

The amplifiers can withstand high temperature operation up to 105 degrees C to enable stable voice output without compromising functionality even under severe conditions, Rohm said.

With conventional over current protection circuits, the maximum output is limited, since the operating threshold of the protection circuit must be set to a value smaller than the maximum current the speaker amp can provide. Rohm’s over-current protection circuit eliminates the need to limit the output by preventing waveform distortion even at high output. The BD783xxEFJ-M series provides over-current protection from output shorts with 2.8W maximum output at 4Ohm load and 10 per cent distortion.

The BD783xxEFJ-M series is qualified to withstand automotive reliability standard AEC-Q100 and the power package reduces heat generation even at high volumes, resulting in stable audio output. In addition to over-current protection, thermal shutdown and under-voltage lock-out are built-in, preventing damage caused by abnormal heat generation and unexpected popping (cracking) noise during battery interruptions.

ROHM’s BD783xxEFJ-M series speaker operational amps are mounted on Cypress Semiconductor’s Traveo Cluster microcontroller family S6J3360 series evaluation board for automotive applications.

Rohm offers output gains of +6dB (BD78306EFJ-M), +10dB (BD78310EFJ-M), and +26dB (BD78626EFJ-M). The range will be expanded to include a total of 11 models ranging from +6dB to +26dB in 2dB steps.

http://www.rohm.com/eu

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Chipset family supports 6GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi 6E

Wed, Apr 22, 2020

Equipped with an architecture designed to maximise use of the 6GHz band, the QCS-AX2 chipset family is optimised for high-throughput Wi-Fi applications, such as access points, gateways, and mesh networking solutions for dense environments and under-served areas, says ON Semiconductor.

The QCS-AX2 supports the 6GHz spectrum band based on the enhanced Wi-Fi 6E standard. The chipset is built on an integrated baseband and RF architecture that supports key Wi-Fi 6E features, such as orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), advanced multi-user, multi-input, multi-output (MU-MIMO), 160MHz channel support for faster speeds and SmartScan channel selection.

The family consists of the QCS-AX2-A12, tri-band (6GHz/5GHz/2.4GHz) with AdaptivMIMO technology. It supports flexible 8×8 or 4×4 configurations, the QCS-AX2-T12, a tri-band concurrent 4×4 operation for high performance, cost-effective router solutions, says ON Semiconductor, and the QCS-AX2-T8, a tri-band concurrent eight-stream configuration for mesh nodes and mainstream access points.

The Federal Communications Commission anticipates the opening of the 6GHz band in the US later this year, with up to 1,200MHz of newly available spectrum to be designated for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use. With almost five times more spectrum than the current 2.4 GHz and 5GHz bands combined, the 6GHz band is accelerating the development of Wi-Fi 6 applications. The 6GHz client ecosystem will take time to build but the Wi-Fi infrastructure devices, such as gateways, routers, and access points will need to continue to support existing dual band (2.4GHz/5GHz) clients.

ON Semiconductor’s Wi-Fi 6E products accommodate the transition to the 6GHz band with AdaptivMIMO technology. A Wi-Fi 6E infrastructure device with AdaptivMIMO allows the network to operate in the 5GHz or 6GHz band depending on the clients present in a subscriber’s home network to maximise performance, coverage, and utilisation. The QCS-AX2 series provides the Wi-Fi performance and connectivity in congested environments to multiple devices that applications demand.

ON Semiconductor is now sampling the QCS-AX2 solutions to customers.

http://www.onsemi.com

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NXP offers Wi-Fi 6 processors for automotive and IoT

Wed, Apr 08, 2020

Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) devices from NXP Semiconductors support developers’ efforts to adopt the latest Wi-Fi standards. The company says its expanded Wi-Fi 6 portfolio applies to connectivity for automotive, access, mobile and industrial and IoT markets.

Wi-Fi 6 delivers symmetric multi-gigabit uploads and downloads, lower latency, increased capacity and improved power efficiency, explains NXP. These technical advancements have so far been limited to premium products but NXP says these benefits are now available for large-scale deployment across multiple markets, enabling products with up to four-fold performance improvement, greater range, improved battery life and greater connection reliability for Wi-Fi capabilities. Wi-Fi 6 connectivity can be applied to smart homes, connected cars, and industrial machinery.

The portfolio consists of the 88W9064 and 88W9068, 4×4 and 8×8-stream solutions with integrated Bluetooth 5 for home and enterprise access solutions, the 88Q9098 concurrent dual Wi-Fi 2×2+2×2 + Bluetooth 5 AEC-Q100-qualified devices for infotainment and telematics automotive applications, the 88W9098, concurrent dual Wi-Fi 2×2+2×2 + Bluetooth 5 devices for multimedia streaming and consumer access applications. Others are IoT-focused 2×2 WiFi 6 + Bluetooth 5 devices.

NXP’s RF front-end solutions are based on silicon germanium (SiGe) and can scale Wi-Fi 6 capabilities from low to high-end applications, including 1×1, 2×2, 4×4 and 8×8 multiple input, multiple output (MIMO). It is packaged in a compact 3.0 x 4.0mm module for mobile products.

“To date, the adoption of Wi-Fi 6 has predominantly been driven by smartphones. However, we expect significant traction to build within the IoT, infrastructure, and automotive markets throughout 2020 and beyond. said Andrew Zignani, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Wireless Connectivity Principal Analyst at ABI Research.

When combined with the processing power of the EdgeVerse platform, NXP enables smart connected devices, connecting people to the internet, joining IoT devices to the cloud, or communicating with cars.

NXP Semiconductors says it is the world leader in secure connectivity solutions for embedded applications, and is driving innovation in the automotive, industrial and IoT, mobile, and communication infrastructure markets. It has more than 60 years of combined experience and expertise, with employees in more than 30 countries.

http://www.nxp.com

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PMICs halve current to boost efficiency, says Silicon Labs

High power speaker amp ICs are optimised for autonomous driving

Chipset family supports 6GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi 6E

NXP offers Wi-Fi 6 processors for automotive and IoT

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