Sector News Archives - Page 272 of 606 - SmartCitiesElectronics.com

Automotive wireless charging reference design is Qi 1.3-certified

Fri, Oct 22, 2021

Believed to be the first automotive wireless charging reference design to be certified by the Wireless Power Consortium for the new Qi 1.3 standard, NXP has released the Automotive 15W Wireless Charging Transmitter reference design.

It consists of a Qi-certified board with an NXP wireless charging MWCT microcontroller, as well as optional NFC, secure element and CAN / LIN transceiver. It also features a software package with NXP’s wireless charging Qi 1.3 software library and a suite of customisable software design to make it easier for developers to bring a Qi-certified wireless charger to market.

The Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi standard is used by most major smartphone manufacturers, including Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi. The Qi 1.3 standard includes new secure authentication features that verify if a smartphone or other wireless power device is Qi-certified and can reduce the wireless power transfer to lower levels if an uncertified device is detected. This ensures user safety and protects equipment from damage. It does, however, requires the addition of secure storage to the wireless power transmitter, addressed by NXP’s automotive-grade products.

Customers can use customise the wireless charging software library, based on the type of wireless charging application targeted. Design options include scaling designs from 5.0 to 15W and above with proprietary protocols, single or multi-coil chargers and across vehicles fleets.

NXP released pre-production details of the WCT-15WAUTO13 multi-coil transmitter reference platform, the first Qi 1.3-certified 15W reference design for in-vehicle wireless charging applications based on the NXP MWCT2xx3A controller IC family.

The system supports 40W power delivery to meet all customised fast charging requirements. It uses automotive-grade components and other automotive functions including EMC optimisation, safety features and MISRA C compliance software. It complies with the Wireless Power Consortium’s Qi v1.3 specification including authentication and is certified as an MP-A13 transmitter type.

http://www.NXP.com

> Read More

Wireless microcontrollers support Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy specification

Fri, Oct 22, 2021

Microcontrollers that will support the recently released Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy specification will be part of the Renesas Advanced (RA) family of 32-bit Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers. They will join the RA4W1 Bluetooth 5.0 LE device introduced last year.

The Bluetooth 5.3 specification was released on July 13, 2021. It includes new features, such as allowing receivers to filter out messages without involving the host stack to improve the receiver duty cycle. It also enables peripheral devices to provide preferred channels to a central device in order to improve throughput and reliability. There are sub-rated connections which improve switching time between low and high duty cycle connections for applications that occasionally need to switch to burst traffic, explains Renesas.

The new microcontrollers will support these features. In addition, they will support the direction-finding functionality introduced in Bluetooth 5.1 as well as the isochronous channels added in Bluetooth 5.2 for stereo audio transmission. Software-defined radio (SDR) capabilities will allow customers to migrate to new specification releases at a later date.

The new products will be supported by the RA family’s Flexible Software Package (FSP) for development of applications and the Renesas QE for Bluetooth LE plug-in. This is a dedicated Bluetooth profile and application development support tool. They will also include the RA family’s security and safety mechanisms, including TrustZone support.

Roger Wendelken, senior vice president in Renesas’ IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit, commented: “By offering early, robust support for the Bluetooth 5.3 LE specification, we will enable our RA customers to be first to market with their next-generation products.”

Renesas reports that the new microcontrollers are being developed using an advanced manufacturing process that will enable high-performance, low power consumption and small package options. Samples are expected to be available in Q1 of 2022.

Renesas Electronics specialises in microcontrollers, analogue, power and SoC products for a broad range of automotive, industrial, Infrastructure, and IoT applications.

http://www.renesas.com

> Read More

Single-instrument test brings cost-efficient 5G IoT UE verification

Fri, Oct 22, 2021

Claimed to be the only test station in its class to offer user equipment (UE) repair facilities, test houses and basic UE/IoT developers affordable LTE, FR1 and FR2 support, the MT8000A is a 5G entry model instrument by Anritsu.

The single instrument radio communication test station MT8000A 5G entry model supports multiple radio access technologies (RATs) of LTE through 5G NR. The 5G entry model is claimed to be the only model in its class that can perform LTE, NR FR1 sub-6GHz and FR2 millimeter wave (mmWave) measurements. These characteristics, says Anrtitsu, make it a cost-efficient solution for mobile device developers, repair facilities and test laboratories.

The high-speed performance of the MT8000A 5G entry model means critical testing across numerous test combinations can be performed in a lower timeframe, despite the increasing number of wireless device channels and use cases, says Anritsu. The MT8000A 5G entry model has been developed to support the market need to provide stable and reliable wireless evaluation functions of advanced smart IoT devices at low cost.

It is claimed to be the only test instrument in its class that has a simple upgrade path from low-, mid- and high-range capability when advanced test functionalities are needed.

The all-in-one 5G device test platform supports RF and protocol testing, functional and application testing and beam characteristic validation. It supports non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) mode base station emulation functions for development of 4G and 5G chipsets and devices, as well as mobile services frequency ranges FR1 and FR2. The MT8000A is used for performance evaluation of LTE and NR devices in conducted and over the air (OTA) measurements.

Anritsu provides communications test and measurement equipment and engages customers as partners to help develop wireless, optical, microwave/RF, and digital solutions for R&D, manufacturing, installation, and maintenance applications, as well as services for network monitoring and optimisation. Anritsu also provides precision microwave/RF components, optical devices, and high-speed electrical devices for communication products and systems. The company develops products for 5G, M2M, IoT, as well as other emerging and legacy wireline and wireless communication markets.

http://www.anritsu.com

> Read More

Nvidia unveils Isacc ROS GEMS with AI perception

Fri, Oct 22, 2021

At the robotics event, ROS World 2021, Nvidia unveiled Isaac ROS GEMS, graphic processing unit (GPU) programming examples. They provide packages that include image processing and computer vision, including deep neural network (DNN) -based algorithms that are optimised for Nvidia GPUs and Jetson.

As autonomous machines move around their environments, they must keep track of where they are using visual odometry which estimates where a camera is relative to its starting position. The Isaac ROS GEM for stereo visual odometry provides this functionality to ROS developers. According to Nvidia, this GEM offers the best accuracy for a real-time stereo camera visual odometry solution. In addition to being highly accurate, this GPU-accelerated package runs extremely fast. It is now possible to run SLAM on HD resolution (1280 x 720) in real-time (more than 60 frames per second) on an Nvidia Jetson AGX Xavier.

Developers can use any of Nvidia’s inference models available via Nvidia’s website or provide their own DNN with DNN Inference GEM. Pre-trained models or optimisations of developers’ own models can be tuned via Nvidia’s TAO toolkit.

After optimisation, TensorRT or Triton, Nvidia’s inference server, deploy these packages. Optimal inference performance will be achieved with the nodes leveraging the inference software development kit, TensorRT, advises Nvidia. If TensorRT does not support the desired DNN model, then Nvidia Triton should be used to deploy the model, says the company.

The GEM includes native support for U-Net and DOPE. The U-Net package, based on TensorRT, can be used for generating semantic segmentation masks from images; the DOPE package can be used for 3D pose estimation for all detected objects.

According to Nvidia, this tool is the fastest way to incorporate performant artificial intelligence (AI) inference into a ROS application.

The GA release of Isaac Sim, which will be available in November 2021, with improvements in the user interface, performance and useful building blocks to improve simulations which are built faster. There are also planned to be an improved ROS bridge and more ROS samples.

Nvidia has a virtual booth at ROS World 21, with technical presentations on Isaac.

http://www.nvidia.com

> Read More

Automotive wireless charging reference design is Qi 1.3-certified

Wireless microcontrollers support Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy specification

Single-instrument test brings cost-efficient 5G IoT UE verification

Nvidia unveils Isacc ROS GEMS with AI perception

About Smart Cities