It is an often-repeated mantra that the pressures on RF products are for smaller size, lower cost and reduced power consumption. But while the first two of these seem to broadly move in the required direction over time, following the RF version of Moore's Law, the truth is that although RF transceiver subsystems have become more sophisticated and more highly integrated over the past 5 years, no real improvement in power consumption has been achieved.
Now Energy Micro, founded in 2007 by former Chipcon CEO and co-founder Geir Førre, has pledged to disrupt this trend in 2011 by launching devices that equal present standards of integration while offering energy consumption figures four times lower than those available today. This is a feat that the young company has already achieved with its range of low-energy ARM Cortex-M3 based microcontrollers, and Førre sees no obstacle to repeating this in the RF domain.
The transceivers are planned to cover multiple frequency bands and support both standard and proprietary wireless protocols. Reflecting the company's existing microcontroller customer base, initial target applications will include energy metering, home and building automation and alarm and security industries.
"In terms of energy consumption, RF products have simply not improved over the last five year," commented Geir Førre, President and CEO of Energy Micro. "With the launch of our EFM32 Gecko microcontrollers in 2009, we proved we have the capability and know-how to challenge the status quo in electronic design and produce the world's most energy friendly products. With a number of our team starting out life at the Chipcon company, RF design is another of Energy Micro's core competences and we look forward to providing customers with complete low energy microcontroller and low energy radio solutions."
Førre led Chipcon's development for 10 years from its origins in 1996 as a design house to become a successful manufacturer of low-power RF products. Following Chipcon's January 2006 acquisition by Texas Instruments he served as the Managing Director of Texas Instruments Norway ASA, and as Product Line Manager of Texas Instruments' Low Power Wireless business unit.
