IoT

eFuse ICs protect and control circuits in datacomms and industry

Thu, Oct 06, 2022

Four ICs have been developed by Littelfuse to protect, sense and control consumer, datacomms and industrial electronics. There are four eFuse Protection ICs available from Littelfuse.

The ICs are designed to provide a wide range of power input (3.3V to 28V) and integrated protection in the form of over-voltage, over-current, short circuit, inrush current, reverse current, and over-temperature protection with real-time diagnostics – all in a single chip.

The LS0504EVT233 is a 5V, 4A IC with over-voltage, over-current protection in an SOT23-3 package. The LS0505EVD22 is a 5V, 5A model with over-voltage and over-current protection in a DFN 2.0 x 2.0mm package. The LS1205ExD33 is an 18V, 5A IC with programmable current limit and output voltage clamp in a DFN 3.0 x 3.0mm package. The fourth model, the LS2406ERQ23 is a 28V, 6A true reverse block, fast role swap IC in a QFN 2.5 x 3.2mm package. 

The ICs can be used in Bluetooth headsets, wearable devices, PCs as well as tablets and notebooks, charging cables, battery-powered and adapter powered devices, networking and datacomms power systems, fan control HDD and SDD storage drives and industrial equipment with 12/24V power I/O.   

The ICs provide an accurate current limiter, with faster response time and more integrated protection features than traditional fuses and PTCs, claimed Littelfuse. They also have design flexibility with adjustable over-voltage threshold, current limiting, and inrush current protection, with true reverse current blocking. The integrated ICs save PCB space and reduce the bill of material cost, while reducing design-in phase and time to market compared to typical discrete solutions, such as a hot-swap controller and MOSFET combination, said the company.

They are also claimed to increase battery life, lower repair costs and extend overall product lifetime.

  “Providing a low power consumption, high accuracy current limiting circuit with quick response time makes them a win-win-win for many portable electronics and datacom applications,” said Bernie Hsieh, assistant product manager of the Protection Semiconductor business team at Littelfuse.

The eFuse Protection ICs are available in tape and reel format in quantities through authorised Littelfuse distributors worldwide. 

 http://www.Littelfuse.com

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NFC chip is first IC certified for CCC applications

Wed, Oct 05, 2022

Believed to be the first NFC Forum-certified IC for CCC applications, the ST25R3920B eases certification of digital car key systems, said STMicroelectronics.

The automotive-qualified NFC reader ICs for Car Connectivity Consortium (CCC) digital-key applications is used in car door and centre console locations for keyless entry and starting. It can also be used as Qi wireless-charging control and smartphone pairing. 

The chip has ST’s Heartbeat algorithm for NFC card protection on Wireless Power Consortium (WPC) applications, which can differentiate between an NFC card and a smartphone in card-emulation mode. This ensures phones can charge while cards stay protected.

New features include enhanced active wave shaping (AWS), this eases certification to the latest NFC Forum Certification Release 13 (CR13), said ST. It also promotes interoperability between CCC digital keys and smartphones. AWS helps remove undershoot and overshoot from the received signal by adjusting parameters. In doing so it avoids repeatedly rematching the antenna during development. The ST25R3920B also supports automatic antenna tuning and automatic low power wake up.

The ST25R3920B has output power up to 1.6W combined with what is claimed to be best in class sensitivity to maximise interaction distance when installed in, for example, in a car door handle, where space constraints require a small antenna. The output power is dynamically adjustable to comply with upper and lower limits expressed in NFC Forum and EMVCo specifications.

ST has combined a highly noise-resistant input structure and integrate noise suppression receivers (NSR). It claimed that the ST25R3920B has the market’s best immunity against external interference. It can also pass car manufacturers’ most stringent proprietary injected noise tests to ensure safe operation in worst-case conditions, said the company.

Samples of the ST25R3920B are available now. 

http://www.st.com

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Low profile 5G and 4G LTE antennas are slim for limited spaces

Tue, Oct 04, 2022

Two low profile antennas have a low height of just 1.6mm. This makes the Alcor and Atria suitable for a variety of applications, said Synzen Precision Technology.

The Alcor is a 5G low profile surface mount antenna that is compact but still covers bands from 617 to 6000MHz. It has a small footprint of 40 x 10 x 1.6mm, a minimal clearance of 40.0 x 13.5mm and a fallback to 4G / 3G / 2G.

Atria is even more compact at 30.0 x 7.0 x 1.6mm but still covers bands from 698 to 2690MHz. Minimal clearance is 30.0 x 12.0mm. It also falls back to 3G / 2G. It requires a small clearance area, added the company.  (don’t be fooled by claims of small antennas which often need a much bigger clearance area).

“Many antennas calling themselves low-profile are double the height – around 3.0mm. We’ve been able to halve that without losing any performance. Our elegant design solution is also cost-effective for customers because it doesn’t require any external RF switch circuits,” said Synzen’s technical director, Chris Tomlin. 

Alcor and Atria are suitable for MIMO applications and are designed to work in compact devices with limited space. These antennas are suitable for wearables, health monitoring, smart meters and other slim IoT devices, confirmed Synzen Precision Technology. Left and right corner mount versions are offered.

These latest antennas form part of Synzen’s Galaxy class, which all feature low-profile design.

Synzen Precision Technology is an antenna and module product design company based in Taipei, Taiwan. The company offers advice and support for customers for antenna choices. The company will advise on optimal placement and tuning and offers free testing to characterise the performance. The company can even test and prove a design within a day without charge.

For custom design or additional support for an ongoing project, the company offers free technical support for the lifecycle of a product.

http://www.synzen.com.tw

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Industrial ATX motherboard is scalable for AIoT

Mon, Oct 03, 2022

Equipped with an LGA1700 socket for the 12th generation Intel Core i9 / i7 / i5 / i3 processors (code named Alder Lake-S), the IBM540 is the latest industrial ATX motherboard from Axiomtek.

It has quad displays and dual GPU expansion for AIoT applications. The IMB540 is built with the Intel R680E chipset and the Alder Lake-S CPU options. It also has four DDR4-3200 ECC/non-ECC un-buffered long-DIMM slots with a total capacity of 128Gbyte. There are five PCIe slots, two 4.0 x16 slots and three x4 slots for GPU, AI acceleration, frame grabber, NIC and motion control card configurations. 

The networking interfaces consist of a 2.5GbE LAN port with time-sensitive networking (TSN), a GbE LAN port, as well as a PCIe mini card slot with SIM slot for Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / LTE connectivity. The Intel Iris Xe Graphics allows for support of up to four independent displays via HDMI, DVI-D, VGA, and DisplayPort++.

For storage, there are four SATA 3.0 ports with integrated RAID 0 / 1 / 5 / 10 and additional storage is available via an M.2 Key M 2280 slot with PCIe x4 signal for NVMe SSD. The USB interface support includes four USB 3.2 Gen2, four USB 3.2 Gen1 and five USB 2.0 ports. The board is further equipped with four RS-232, two RS-232 / -422 /- 485, eight-channel programmable digital I/O, one HD codec audio, one SMBus, and one PS/2 keyboard and mouse. 

The industrial ATX motherboard can withstand a wide operating temperature range from 0 to 60 degrees C. It also supports onboard Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM) to provide hardware-based data protection. Operating systems are Windows 10 and Linux.

The IMB540 drives AI computing performance and includes sufficient I/O, high-speed interfaces, multi-display connection capability and flexible expansion slots for medical imaging, video surveillance, computer vision and data analysis, said Kasper Tsai, the product manager of the AIoT team at Axiomtek. “Moreover, we have the capability to assist with any customer’s industrial integration requirements and achieve fast time to market,” he added.

http://www.axiomtek.com 

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