ITEC claims latest RFID inlay die bonder is fastest and most accurate yet

According to ITEC, its ADAT3 XF Tagliner is the industry’s fastest and most accurate RFID inlay die bonder. It has placement speeds of up to 48,000 units per hour (UPH), with positional and rotational accuracies better than nine microns and 0.67 degrees at one sigma. It is three times faster and 30 per cent more accurate than other die bonding equipment, claimed the company. “

The ADAT3 XF Tagliner is fully automated, with yields in excess of 99.5 per cent. It is also claimed to have the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership for equipment of this type, enabling it to bring a “significant competitive advantage” through lower manufacturing costs, said the company. It can be used in a broad range of new RFID applications including retail and automotive labels, access control, railway tickets, airline luggage tags and shipping containers.

ITEC has over 30 years’ experience in RFID, installing high-volume semiconductor chip-attach systems in multiple markets. The ADAT3 XF Tagliner includes semiconductor industry-standard features like automatic wafer change (for eight- and 12-inch wafers) and multiple high-resolution cameras inspecting before and after every process step.

The machine’s high-precision glue curing system has only two thermodes. This results in fewer moving parts for improved reliability and maintainability. The curing time of 65 milliseconds is two orders of magnitude lower than other RFID die bonders (typically several seconds), which increase operating efficiency.

The ADAT3 XF Tagliner can accommodate a diverse range of transparent and opaque web materials. That gives it another advantage over incumbent RFID die bonding equipment, said ITEC which can only use transparent material. The system integrates BW Paper systems winders and Voyantic readers, which allows it to be used with emerging and more sustainable substrate materials like paper, which are gradually replacing PET plastics. Even up to a web pitch of 50.8mm, it mains a speed of 48,000 UPH, confirmed ITEC.

The RFID die bonder has been qualified for qualified for major chip suppliers and meets the industry’s most rigorous temperature, humidity, and mechanical reliability requirements, said the company. Today it can place dies with dimensions as small as 200 microns, and this figure will improve over time. Upgrades over the course of the ADAT3 XF Tagliner’s lifetime will further optimise operation and boost performance, said the company.

Headquartered in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, ITEC is a back-end semiconductor equipment manufacturer specialising in high-volume production of semiconductors. ITEC provides the highest productivity assembly, test, inspection, and smart manufacturing platforms, targeting mass volume manufacturing from small signal to power MOS devices.

ITEC is rooted in semiconductor manufacturing, combining over 30 years of equipment and automation expertise as partner to Philips and Nexperia. In 2021, ITEC became a separate legal entity.

 

http://www.itecequipment.com

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Wi-Fi companion IC is first silicon-to-cloud locationing solution, says Nordic

The nRF7000 Wi-Fi companion IC is a low-power Wi-Fi 6 chip, optimised for Wi-Fi network scanning on both the 2.4- and 5GHz Wi-Fi frequency bands.

It is the final part of Nordic Semiconductor’s SSID-based Wi-Fi location solution, said the company. The nRF7000 Wi-Fi companion IC, together with Nordic’s nRF91 Series cellular IoT system in package (SiP), enables SSID-based Wi-Fi location fixing. Nordic’s SSID-based Wi-Fi enables the acquisition of accurate location fixes in a power efficient manner both indoors and outdoors, and in urban and suburban areas. Nordic explained that this is a valuable complement to GNSS, especially in buildings and in dense urban areas where GNSS can fail due to signal fading and interruptions. Scanning for Wi-Fi SSIDs for location finding is commonplace in products such as smartphones. 

The nRF7000 IC is optimised for low power Wi-Fi SSID scanning and does not support data communication via Wi-Fi. The result is a balance between power consumption and location precision, said Nordic.
The nRF7000 IC is used for Wi-Fi scanning with an nRF91 series SiP for cellular communication to Nordic’s nRF Cloud. Instead of relying on traditional methods like cell towers or satellite signals, SSID-based Wi-Fi location fixing scans the signals from nearby Wi-Fi access points to accurately determine a tracker’s location. This offers a location accuracy that is better than cellular-based, said Nordic, but less accurate than GNSS, while being more power-efficient than GNSS and almost as power-efficient as cellular-based options.

“Nordic’s dedication to low power wireless technology enables us to provide highly efficient solutions for numerous IoT applications,” says Kjetil Holstad, executive vice president strategy and product management at Nordic Semiconductor. “Customers now need to come to just one place for a comprehensive, low power location-ing solution,” he said. “This streamlines the process and saves them significant time and money.” 

Finn Boetius, product marketing engineer at Nordic Semiconductor, added: “Competing solutions tend to use general-purpose Wi-Fi ICs for Wi-Fi location-ing. These are usually over-sized and not optimised for this specific use case. This makes them both more expensive and more power-hungry”.
This option allows a trade-off between position accuracy and power consumption, continued Boetius. “In situations where high position precision is needed, GNSS is the best option. But if GNSS is unavailable or only a very rough location is needed, you can use cell-based locationing and save battery life; this will be accurate enough to tell you in which neighbourhood your device is. If you’re still without GNSS and need more, accurate information, you include Wi-Fi information at the cost of a little more power. This will be accurate enough to tell you in which house the device is located.”
Nordic’s SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing solution is supported by the nRF Connect SDK (software development kit), the company’s single software development environment. When used in conjunction with Nordic’s nRF Cloud Services, the SDK enables effortless over-the-air updates for application, middleware, and / or modem firmware while providing a secure and reliable update procedure.  

Nordic offers the nRF7002 EK (evaluation kit) to help developers get started on location projects. The EK is supplied in an Arduino shield form factor and can easily be combined with an nRF9160 DK (Development Kit). 

The nRF7000 Wi-Fi Companion IC and the nRF7002 EK are available now through Nordic’s distribution partners.

https://www.nordicsemi.com/

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Two data lane ReDriver supports MIPI D-PHY 1.2 protocols

A low power, high performance MIPI D-PHY 1.2-compliant signal ReDriver by Diodes, the PI2MEQX2503, regenerates signals transmitted at data rates up to 2.5Gbits per second from cameras to displays. It is suitable for various applications, including laptops, tablets, mobile phones, IoT devices, commercial displays, augmented reality headsets, drones and robots.

It has a dual data lane equaliser and a single clock lane. The PI2MEQX2503 compensates for PCB, connector, cable and switching-related losses. This ReDriver enables optimum electrical performance from a CSI2 source to a DSI sink. It operates at up to 2.5Gbits per second to comply with the MIPI D-PHY 1.2 specification for camera images with increasing numbers of pixels.

The 120mW active-mode power consumption of the PI2MEQX2503 is more power efficient compared to a ReTimer, said Diodes. The low power (5mW), ultra low power (2mW) and shutdown (0.2mW) modes of operation offer further power savings, helping to extend battery life. It also has programmable receiver equalisation, output swing and pre-emphasis to compensate for channel loss with low latency over longer length traces while minimising power consumption.

For added robustness, the PI2MEQX2503 supports a -40 to +85 degrees C operating temperature range for industrial applications. The ReDriver is supplied in a small X1QFN-24 (XEA24) package measuring only 2.0 x 4.0mm.

Diodes is a Standard and Poor’s SmallCap 600 and Russell 3000 Index company, which delivers semiconductor products to companies in the automotive, industrial, computing, consumer electronics and communications markets. It leverages an expanded product portfolio of discrete, analogue and mixed-signal products and packaging technology to meet customers’ needs. The company has 32 sites worldwide, including engineering, testing, manufacturing, and customer service, to serve high volume, high growth markets.

http://www.diodes.com

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Infineon introduces PSoC Edge family for power-efficient machine learning

A new family of microcontrollers have been added to Infineon Technologies’ PSoC portfolio of Arm Cortex-based, high performance, low power, secured devices.
PSoC Edge is designed for next generation, responsive compute and control applications, featuring hardware-assisted machine learning (ML) acceleration. The microcontrollers enable end products to be more intelligent and intuitively usable, by lowering the barrier in human-machine interaction and adding contextual awareness to end applications, explained Infineon. At the same time, they provide robust privacy and safety protection through embedded Infineon Edge Protect technologies.
Microcontrollers in the new PSoC Edge portfolio offer a mix of scalable power and performance to support emerging AI/ML requirements, extensive HMI capabilities and security features required for next-generation applications. All supported with a deep ecosystem of software and tools, fit for task, said Steve Tateosian, senior vice president of microcontrollers for Infineon.
The PSoC Edge devices are based on Arm Cortex-M55, including Helium DSP support paired with Arm Ethos-U55 and Cortex-M33 paired with Infineon’s low power NNLite which is a proprietary hardware accelerator intended to accelerate the neural networks used in ML and AI applications. There is also support for always-on sensing and response which makes them suitable for advanced IoT and industrial segments such as smart home, security, wearables and robotics, said the company. The family of devices comes with non-volatile, on-chip RRAM as well as high speed, secured external memory support. The PSoC Edge family provides scalability for next-generation intelligent systems while enabling software reuse and portability, Infineon added.
The enhanced intelligence of the PSoC Edge family extends support for advanced graphics, voice, audio and vision-based applications to the existing PSoC portfolio. The new family enables easy migration of applications within the family, as well as an upgrade path from existing designs.
Developers can leverage the power of PSoC Edge for current and future design needs. There is also a strong ecosystem partners, comprehensive documentation and the ModusToolbox software, including integration with Imagimob Studio AI to accelerate time to market.
Infineon’s ModusToolbox software platform provides a collection of development tools, libraries, and embedded runtime assets for a flexible and comprehensive development experience for consumer IoT, industrial, smart home and wearable applications.
Imagimob Studio is an Edge AI development platform, integrated into ModusToolbox, and delivers end to end ML development, from data in to model deployed. There are starter projects and Imagimob’s Ready Models available all designed to support developer deploying ML models for the edge.
The PSoC Edge family is available for early access customers now.

http://www.infineon.com/psocedge

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