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Tri-band chipset opens access to 6GHz spectrum, says NXP

Tue, Jan 19, 2021

The CW64 Wi-Fi 6E tri-band SoC from NXP is designed for access points and service provider gateways and enables end network devices to take full advantage of the 6GHz spectrum. The 6GHz band increases capacity in wireless networking and expands spectrum available for Wi-Fi by up to 1.2GHz.

This is the first Wi-Fi 6E Tri-Band SoC from NXP to support the 6GHz band to provide greater capacity in wireless networking, as congestion increases in the legacy 2.4 and 5GHz bands. It supports 160MHz channel bandwidth with PHY rates of 4.8Gbits per second and over 4Gbits per second of real-world throughput

The 4×4 Wi-Fi device has four spatial streams and 160/80/40/20MHz channel bandwidth, with uplink and downlink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and uplink and downlink Multi-user, multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO) technology.

The CW641 is the first of six planned devices in the series. It enables increased speeds of over 4Gbps and multi-user performance in the new 6GHz band, providing greater capacity and lower latency. Adding 6GHz capabilities to gateway platforms gives service providers options to efficiently partition available bandwidth across devices to ensure optimum user experience for a wide range of applications. Mission-critical, high bandwidth, low latency applications like mesh back haul and cloud gaming are likely to migrate to 6GHz, freeing up the congested 5GHz and 2.4 GHz bands.

The Wi-Fi 6E tri-band SoC can also be used in the 6GHz spectrum to boost the performance of in-home mesh networks, streaming high-resolution music and videos, online gaming, video calling, digital downloads and data-heavy web content, explains NXP. In addition, the CW641 SoC can contribute to Wi-Fi 6E applications across consumer, automotive, industrial, and the IoT.

The CW641 Wi-Fi 6E tri-band SoC is sampling now.

NXP claims to have one of the industry’s broadest portfolios of wireless technologies. When combined with the processing power of the EdgeVerse platform, NXP says its portfolio allows customers to advance their most innovative ideas.

NXP Semiconductors aims to enable secure connections for a smarter world. The secure connectivity for embedded applications provider, is driving innovation in the automotive, industrial and IoT, mobile, and communication infrastructure markets. Built on more than 60 years of combined experience and expertise, the company has employees in more than 30 countries.

http://www.nxp.com

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Web authentication IC to make NFC authentication scalable

Fri, Jan 15, 2021

Swiss semiconductor company, EM Microelectronic, announces full volume production of em|linq, the NFC tag authentication IC. em|linq offers to brands the possibility to engage with their customers via NFC and to offer advanced product authentication.

NFC tags are a popular support for consumer engagement, turning any smartphone into a portal for accessing brand content. When the NFC tag content is dynamic, the tags also provide enhanced protection against cloning.

Scalability requires robust, cost-effective products but the authentication component adds cost and complexity typical to smartcards, making the return on investment proposition more difficult. In response, em|linq combines powerful cryptographic mechanisms typically reserved to smartcard products with the convenience and affordability of RFID products, says EM Microelectronic.

It is based on proven, open standards, allowing for full degree of freedom in the implementation of the authentication service. The key management and provisioning. critical for the security architecture, can be handled and fully controlled by the company who implements the solution, regardless of its position in the value chain, whether inlay or label manufacturer, integrator, brand or retailer.

Programming the cryptographic keys into the chips is segregated from programming the URL for the authentication service, providing additional flexibility and security for the system implementation.

The IC also opens up integration possibilities for electronic labels. Its small form factor provides superior mechanical robustness, says EM Electronic. Its power efficiency enables small antenna form factor to enhance communication performance. Electrical characteristics are compatible with most of the antenna designs on the market, reducing the engineering effort.

The authentication engine is built on top of a traditional RFID architecture rather than by simplifying a cumbersome smartcard one. Adding the authentication functionality remains an extension of a traditional RFID use case, with no unnecessary overhead. The tags are produced using the same process flow and with the same quality and cost-effectiveness as the standard RFID products. EM Electronic says its RF performance allows for very small inlay constructions, for ease of integration and to reduce the cost.

em|linq is NFC Type-2 compliant. Optimised cryptographic hardware implementation provides best-in-class web authentication brand protection to consumers’ smartphones, claims EM Electronic, using a dynamically generated HMAC-SHA1 code appended to the URL stored in the NDEF container.

http://www.emmicroelectronic.com

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Sensor harvests energy in ADAS wheels

Wed, Jan 13, 2021

Power generation and sensing are combined in the InWheelSense energy harvesting and sensing module for automotive wheels in advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) applications.

The InWheelSense module attaches to the wheel of a vehicle and converts the force of tyre rotation into piezoelectric power and generates battery-less sensing and data collection and transmission from the wheel. According to TDK, delivering an electrical source in this hostile environment is conventionally difficult. The module enables sensing of road surface conditions, wheel alignment, tyre pressure and other conditions in real-time. Smart mobility applications can be implemented when it connects to the roadside infrastructure to help empower smart mobility. The sensors can connect with smart bridges, traffic controls and signage to communicate real-time data and support vehicle-to-pedestrian, vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-vehicle networks.

Until now, environmental sensing for ADAS features have largely been driven by perception sensors like lidar and radar, image and infra red cameras. These sensors provide valuable data for ADAS operations but for improved sensing performance during adverse weather or all terrain conditions, non-perception sensors (such as piezo, inertial measurement unit (IMU), ultrasound, and strain gauges) embedded in the tyre or wheel can more accurately digitalise and classify driving and road conditions.

The InWheelSense energy harvesting module uses piezoelectric elements to generate electric power from mechanical motion or force. By placing the device at the boundary between the tyre and the wheel, the module generates electricity using the force received from the road surface as the tyre rotates. It enables scalable power generation according to the load of the driving system by allowing multiple device connections along the wheel’s circumference. It achieves an average continuous power output of 1mW when driving at 65mph / 105km/h. This perpetual source of power is particularly suitable for digitalising driving, road and tyre conditions using a range of non-perception-based sensing, TDK says.

A vehicle’s speed, turning and other changes in operating conditions can cause variations in the electromotive force characteristics of the device. The InWheelSense module can sense various driving conditions using those power changes through analysis of the waveforms from the piezoelectric effect. Waveforms are output when the tyres contact the road surface, so they are continuously generated as the car drives. As the speed increases, the frequency of the waveforms also increases, and when the direction of travel changes, the load on the tyres will change, creating different waveforms that reflect the driving characteristics at that time. A waveform is delivered for each wheel revolution, therefore the InWheelSense module is able to detect not only the speed during driving, but also road surface conditions based on the shape of the output waveform. The different waveforms reflect the driving characteristics at that time.

InWheelSense also allows for real-time collection of data from additional wheel sensors (including accelerometers, barometric pressure and temperature) to the onboard computation unit. This control module platform includes power management, digital compute capacity and low power data transmission using Bluetooth Low Energy. Data can be stored and / or processed through an inference engine in the control module, powered by an edge processor that enables algorithms to make meaningful inferences on the fly. This allows lower-latency control responses without dependency on the cloud during adverse weather conditions. All the power needed to support the data collection, processing, and action (transmission) is supplied by the energy harvesting power generator, confirms TDK.

InWheelSense provides an evaluation kit dedicated for conducting simple evaluations of the energy-harvesting module as a sample that can be attached to existing wheels. This kit enables wireless collection of data outputted from the device and power generation performance without the need for additional equipment.

https://www.tdk.com

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Face recognition package increases accuracy

Wed, Jan 13, 2021

Image sensing libraries used in the OKAO Vision face recognition package by Omron Electronic Components Europe are claimed to provide “highly accurate” deep learning face recognition. Developers can deploy OKAO Vision on their choice of embedded hardware platform.

The deep learning libraries of OKAO Vision Face Recognition V9.0 address applications that require accuracy under various conditions including poor lighting and when the face is at various angles relative to the detector. These include security and access control, time and attendance monitoring, login/wake up systems, and camera auto focus/auto-exposure control.

The platform can be used to monitor attendance at face to face and online meetings, which will facilitate contact tracing and verification of attendance. Another application will be in automotive design, for example in driver recognition to manage features such as seat adjustment.

The face recognition libraries achieve “excellent” evaluation results with various skin tones and face sizes, says Omron. It delivers a low error rate down to image size as small as 40 pixels. Benchmark testing with Intel and Arm processors has demonstrated that OKAO Vision Face Recognition V9.0 maintains exceptionally fast recognition times despite the enhanced accuracy, reports Omron. This ensures that users in access control applications for example will be barely conscious of the need to wait for validation of their identity.

The complete OKAO Vision Face Recognition V9.0 package contains modular libraries that provide sensing capabilities including expression estimation, age and gender estimation, and photographic image beautification including red eye reduction, facial shaping, eye enlargement, and blemish removal. Users can combine various modules’ functionalities to add value to applications.

OKAO Vision is available as a set of software libraries and can integrate with Linux, Windows and iOS operating systems. Users can leverage Omron’s machine vision package in embedded systems running on custom hardware. Off-the-shelf libraries are already available for various platforms, adds Omron.

http://components.omron.eu

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Tri-band chipset opens access to 6GHz spectrum, says NXP

Web authentication IC to make NFC authentication scalable

Sensor harvests energy in ADAS wheels

Face recognition package increases accuracy

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