ICs & Semiconductors

Renesas Electronics adds RL78/G1H to Wi-SUN FAN-compliant portfolio

Fri, Mar 13, 2020

Renesas Electronics’ RL78/G1H-based sub-GHz wireless solution has been certified under the Wireless Smart Ubiquitous Network for Field Area Network profile (Wi-SUN FAN) communication standards.

The Wi-SUN Alliance is an international industry group that specifies wireless communication standards used within the Sub-GHz band.　

Tessera Technology TK-RLG1H+SB2 evaluation board incorporates the Renesas 16-bit RL78/G1H microcontroller with integrated wireless functionality and a Wi-SUN FAN communication control software stack. The combination enables customers to develop Wi-SUN FAN-compliant devices quickly and easily, says Renesas, reducing the time required for certification in the development process by approximately one year.

“Wireless frequencies in the sub-GHz band are relatively unaffected by obstacles such as  walls and buildings, which makes it possible to transmit data over longer distances in urban settings, and Wi-SUN FAN is gaining popularity as a wide-area wireless network standard with mesh network support,” said Toru Moriya, vice president, Emerging Market business division at Renesas. “Our certified RL78-based wireless solution will alleviate the development burden associated with sensor network applications such as logistics and infrastructure management, and accelerate the widespread adoption of Wi-SUN FAN to realize smart cities and smart grids,” he added.

In addition to the certified RL78 wireless solution, Renesas offers a dual-chip solution combining the 32-bit RX651 microcontroller and the RAA604S00 wireless communications IC. This solution was Wi-SUN FAN certified in 2019.

Customers can develop gateway applications, such as border routers between FAN and wide area network (WAN) or terminal applications, such as routers, using products from Renesas’ Wi-SUN FAN portfolio, according to required specifications, such as microcontroller processing performance, memory capacity, or power efficiency.

Intended end applications are smart meter power usage visualisation, smart illumination, sensor management in factories or office buildings, and equipment operation monitoring.

A communication control software for the Wi-SUN certified RL78/G1H solution will be available by September 2020.

https://www.renesas.com

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Software accelerates AI deployment in audio, voice and sensing devices

Thu, Mar 12, 2020

Software for Cadence Tensilica HiFi digital signal processors (DSPs) has been optimised to execute TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers, part of the TensorFlow open-source platform for machine learning (ML) from Google. The edge-based ML running on the low power cores supports intelligence in audio, voice and sensing applications.

The HiFi DSPs are the first DSPs to support TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers, says Cadence. The software support for TensorFlow Lite on the HiFi DSP cores, promotes development of edge applications that use artificial intelligence (AI) and ML on TensorFlow and removes the need for hand-coding neural networks. This accelerates time to market, Cadence notes.

Implementing AI at the edge on devices that use voice and audio as a user interface, requires the inference model to be run on the device. This eliminates the latency associated with sending data to a cloud service and waiting for the response to be sent back to the device and also reduces power consumption associated with sending/receiving large amounts of data across a network.

It also serves to maintain privacy and minimise security issues since the data does not leave the device. As the device is not dependent on the cloud, it can be disconnected from the network and still operate.

A 600MHz Tensilica HiFi 4 DSP is included in NXP Semiconductor’s i.MX RT600 and delivers 4.8 Giga multiply-accumulates per second (GMACS). It has the compute power required for deploying voice, audio and other neural network-based applications at the edge. Joe Yu, vice president of microcontrollers at NXP Semiconductors, said: “Supporting the popular, end-to-end toolchain, TensorFlow, as well as other inferencing technologies, on the HiFi DSP will enable ML developers to take advantage of the compelling combination of compute and memory on this chip”.

Yipeng Liu, director of audio/voice IP at Cadence, added: “Support for TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers enables our licensees to innovate with ML applications like keyword detection, audio scene detection, noise reduction and voice recognition, with the assurance that they can run in an extremely low-power footprint”.

http://www.cadence.com

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Wideband mmWave synthesiser is for 5G radio beamforming and MIMO

Thu, Mar 12, 2020

The integrated 8V97003 wideband mmWave synthesiser is has the industry’s highest performance and features optimised for 5G and broadband wireless applications, says Renesas Electronics.

The 8V97003 can be used as a local oscillator (LO) for mmWave and beamforming, or a precision reference clock for a high-speed data converter in test and measurement, optical networking and data acquisition applications.

According to Bobby Matinpour, vice president of Timing Products, IoT and Infrastructure business unit at Renesas: “[The] single-chip . . .  8V97003 is particularly well-suited for emerging applications above the 6GHz carrier frequency, including broadband wireless, microwave backhaul, and 5G radios”.

The 8V97003 is claimed to deliver the industry’s best combination of wide frequency range (171.875MHz to 18GHz), low output phase noise (-60.6dBc at 20kHz to 100MHz at 6GHz) and high output power over its entire frequency range. Engineers can use a single 8V97003 in place of multiple synthesiser modules to reduce footprint and cost of the end product. The high output power eliminates the need for external driver which reduces complexity and power consumption without compromising performances, says Renesas. The low output phase noise makes it suitable for 5G and other wireless applications where it is claimed to enable superior system level signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and error vector magnitude (EVM). As a reference clock for high-speed data converters, the 8V97003 maximises system performance by improving SNR and spurious-free-dynamic-range (SFDR).

Mass production quantities of the 8V97003 are available now in a 7.0 x 7.0mm, 48-lead VFQFPN package.

http://www.renesas.com

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Infineon and Qualcomm enable standard solution for 3D authentication

Fri, Mar 06, 2020

A reference design developed by Infineon Technologies, working with Qualcomm Technologies is for 3D authentication based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 mobile platform.

The reference design uses the REAL3 3D time of flight (ToF) sensor and enables a standardised integration for smartphone manufacturers.

At CES 2020, Infineon introduced the 4.4 x 5.1mm ToF sensor, describing it as the world’s smallest yet most powerful 3D image sensor with VGA resolution. It can be used for face authentication, enhanced photo features and authentic augmented

Andreas Urschitz, division president power management and multimarket at Infineon, commented: “3D sensors enable new uses and additional applications such as secured authentication or payment by facial recognition. We continue to focus on this market and have clear growth targets”.

Infineon develops the 3D ToF sensor technology in co-operation with the software and 3D time-of-flight system specialist pmdtechnologies.

From this month, Infineon’s REAL3 ToF sensor will enable the video bokeh function for the first time in a 5G-capable smartphone for optimal image effects even in moving images. Using the precise 3D point cloud algorithm and software, the received 3D image data is processed for the application. The 3D image sensor captures 940nm infrared light reflected from the user and the scanned objects. It also uses high-level data processing to achieve accurate depth measurements. The patented SBI (Suppression of Background Illumination) technology offers a wide dynamic measuring range from bright sunlight to dimly lit rooms for robust operation without loss of data processing quality.

pmdtechnologies is a fabless IC company headquartered in Siegen, Dresden and Ulm with subsidiaries in the USA, China and Korea. It claims to be the leading 3D ToF CMOS-based digital imaging technology supplier. Founded in 2002, the company owns over 350 worldwide patents concerning pmd-based applications, the pmd measurement principle and its realisation. The company operates in industrial applications.

http://www.infineon.com

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