Sector News

Resonant controller IC is designed for power supply and lighting drivers

Wed, Jul 11, 2018

The second generation ICL5102 resonant controller IC has been designed by Infineon specifically for power supply and lighting drivers.

Main target applications are LED drivers for professional and industrial lighting, and street lighting. The controller IC can also be used for offline AC/DC power supplies and LCD TVs, adds Infineon.

The ICL5102 integrates power factor correction (PFC) and half-bridge (HB) controllers in a single DSO-16 package. It supports universal input voltages ranging from 70 to 325V AC.

Only a few external components are required to configure and support the controller IC, says Infineon, adding that all parameters are set by resistors. The ICL5012 supports fast start-up under 500 milliseconds at less than 100 microA. According to Infineon, the industry-leading PFC is greater than 99 per cent and total harmonic distortion (THD) is less than 3.5 per cent. The controller has up to 94 per cent efficiency by resonant topology, while the active burst mode for low standby consumes less than 30 mW. An enable/disable function supports dimming.

The PFC controller features brown-out detection, adjustable THD for light load operation, and high power factor correction. Due to the high accuracy of bus voltage sensing, only four pins are required for PFC. The resonant HB controller has an integrated 650V high-side driver using an internal coreless transformer with self-adaptive dead time ranging between 250 and 750 nanoseconds, and an operating frequency up to 500kHz. It can detect overload, short circuit, bus, HB or output under- and over-voltage as well as over-temperature. An integrated capacitive mode regulator prevents operation in capacitive mode. All protection features use auto restart (no latch).

Engineering samples and a reference design, REF-ICL5102-U130W-CC, are available now. Full production and shipment will start in Q2 2018.

This news story is brought to you by softei.com, the specialist site dedicated to delivering information about what’s new in the electronics industry, with daily news updates, new products and industry news.

To stay up-to-date, register to receive our weekly newsletters and keep informed of the latest technology news and new products from around the globe. Simply click this link to register here:  softei.com

http://www.infineon.com/icl5102

> Read More

Image recognition SoC reduces power consumption and chip area

Wed, Jul 04, 2018

Fabless semiconductor company, Optimum Semiconductor Technologies, announces the GP8300 SoC. According to the company, the GP8300 dramatically reduces chip cost, area, and power consumption for image recognition and object detection in a range of products such as self-driving cars, autonomous vehicles, smart cameras and other IoT edge devices.

​Created using 28nm technology, the GP8300 includes four 2GHz ‘Unity’ CPU cores from General Processor Technologies (GPT) interconnected with a cache coherent memory supporting heterogeneous systems architecture (HSA) processing for a common programming framework.

The GP8300 also integrates four of GPT’s 2.0GHz variable length vector (VLVm1) digital signal processing (DSP) cores for signal processing applications. Within the chip, the out-of-order CPUs execute control code while very long vectors process data. Alongside these generalised compute units, the chip also integrates two 1.0GHz artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators from GPT.

​”The GP8300 brings together several of GPT’s innovative IP cores with underlying embedded artificial intelligence (eAI) algorithms in a highly-integrated design targeting a wide range of exciting applications,” said Gary Nacer, president and COO of Optimum.

​Building on the success of its SB3500 multi-threaded heterogeneous computing platform for low-power software defined radio (SDR), the GP8300 achieves deep integration of eAI, edge computing, and communications on a single chip, says Optimum. The company provides support for CaffeNet-based training and tools for automatic fixed-point conversion and compression for inference.

​
The GP8300 will be generally available in Q4 2018.

Optimum Semiconductor Technologies (OST) is a fabless semiconductor company providing highly-integrated systems on chips (SoCs), Products are designed for applications across communications, autonomous vehicles and intelligent transportation, smart cities, industrial automation, robotics, and machine vision.

This news story is brought to you by softei.com, the specialist site dedicated to delivering information about what’s new in the electronics industry, with daily news updates, new products and industry news.

To stay up-to-date, register to receive our weekly newsletters and keep informed of the latest technology news and new products from around the globe. Simply click this link to register here:  softei.com

Readers can also register to receive the monthly newsletter from our sister site, weartechdesign.com. This is the only website dedicated to developers of wearable electronic products. Simply click this link to register: weartechdesign.com

We have a Fitbit to give away on both Softei.com and Weartechdesign.com! Register today to enter the competition to win a Fitbit at softei.com or weartechdesign.com.

http://optimumsemi.com

> Read More

Sensor interface IC enables next-gen intelligent electrochemical sensors

Tue, Jul 03, 2018

Believed to be the only IC that incorporates potentiostat and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) functionality on a single chip, the ADuCM355 has been released by Analog Devices.

The precision analogue microcontroller with bio-sensor and chemical sensor is designed for applications such as industrial gas sensing, instrumentation, vital signs monitoring and disease management. According to the company, it features the industry’s most advanced sensor diagnostics, best-in-class low noise and low power performance, and smallest form factor. Unlike traditional discrete solutions, it does not need multiple ICs to achieve similar performance, for increased reliability and cost savings.

It combines the high performance, low power, small form factor and feature set needed to enable next generation portable gas detectors and to set new benchmarks in reliable gas detection while minimising the cost of ownership, said Jacob Spector, global marketing manager, Portable Gas Detection for Honeywell Industrial Safety.

It has been used by PalmSens for mobile gas detection: “PalmSens is committed to make electrochemistry easier, more portable and more accessible,” said Niels van Velzen, CTO at PalmSens. “ADI’s ADuCM355 is at the heart of the new EmStat Pico, the world’s smallest general purpose electrochemical interface module. EmStat Pico is a hardware and software design platform that allows measurement in minutes and is ideal for the development of portable, wearable and space constrained sensor applications,” he added.

The ADuCM355 low power precision analogue microcontroller is based on the ARM Cortex M3 processor, with 26MHz core, 128kbyte Flash and 64kbyte SRAM. Designed to control and measure chemical and biosensors, it supports dual potentiostat (8.5-micro A, 1.6-microV RMS) and three or more sensor electrodes.  It has a flexible, 16-bit, 400ksamples per second measurement channel.

There are advanced sensor diagnostics and integrated analogue hardware accelerators, integrated into the 72-pin LGA package, measuring 6.0 x 5.0mm.•

The ADuCM355 is sampling now, with production quantities available.

http://www.analog.com

> Read More

AC/DC converters meet IoT and smart home power demands

Mon, Jul 02, 2018

Recom has announced 15 and 20W AC/DC power supplies, designed for low power IoT and household applications. The RAC15-K and RAC20-K series are based on the footprint of the company’s compact RAC10-K modules. The new modules feature high-efficiency over a wide load range and minimal standby power consumption, making them suitable for the always-on applications of the IoT and smart homes.

The RAC15-K and RAC20-K series are PCB-mount AC/DC modules with low energy losses especially in light load conditions. According to the company, based on the latest developments of integrated power, the next level of efficiency has been reached, allowing 20W of power in a modular 2.0 x1.0-inch (50 x 25.4mm) case size.

The RAC15-K and RAC20-K AC/DC converters have a universal mains input range of 85VAC up to 264VAC for worldwide use and come with international safety certifications for industrial, AV and ITE as well as household standards. Both the RAC15-K and RAC20-K are able to operate within a temperature range of -40 to +80 degree C and offer fully protected 5V DC single outputs.

The complete range of single output (5.0 – 48V DC), dual output options (12 and 15V DC) and wired versions will be available in Q3 2018. The modules easily meet EMC class B far below the limits without the need for any external components, says the company. Samples and OEM pricing are available from all authorised distributors or directly from Recom.

This news story is brought to you by softei.com, the specialist site dedicated to delivering information about what’s new in the electronics industry, with daily news updates, new products and industry news.

To stay up-to-date, register to receive our weekly newsletters and keep informed of the latest technology news and new products from around the globe. Simply click this link to register here:  softei.com

Readers can also register to receive the monthly newsletter from our sister site, weartechdesign.com. This is the only website dedicated to developers of wearable electronic products. Simply click this link to register: weartechdesign.com

We have a Fitbit to give away on both Softei.com and Weartechdesign.com! Register today to enter the competition to win a Fitbit at softei.com or weartechdesign.com.

http://www.recom-power.com

> Read More

About Smart Cities

This news story is brought to you by smartcitieselectronics.com, the specialist site dedicated to delivering information about what’s new in the Smart City Electronics industry, with daily news updates, new products and industry news. To stay up-to-date, register to receive our weekly newsletters and keep yourself informed on the latest technology news and new products from around the globe. Simply click this link to register here: Smart Cities Registration